Every year, three friends and I take a weekend road trip. It's a "girls only" trip and we spend several months planning where we will go, when we will leave and what we will do once we get there. Some of us are a little more detail oriented than others, but we do leave some things open to chance to make the trip more fun. One reason for the trip is to enjoy time spent in the company of friends and to get away from it all. We meander along the first day, maybe even stopping at interesting places on the way. It's great fun.
BUT--once we get to where we are going, there had better have been a good reason for us to go. If the hotel has no running water, the main tourist attraction is closed and the food inedible, the rest of the trip sours a little bit.
"When Strangers Appear" was like an almost good road trip: interesting companions whom you learn more about as the story progresses, interesting side trips in the plot and a couple of great twists and turns...and then you arrive at your destination and...no running water (well, maybe too much running water--those of you who have seen it may know what I mean), no tourist attraction and lousy food.
I was actually surprised by the actors. Barry Watson and Josh Lucas aren't Hanks or Newman or Penn, but they managed to create creepily likable characters who kept dragging me back and forth to their side. Radha Mitchell was annoyingly spunky but at least she kept it consistent (or tried to--her character was required to do some things that were stupid) and Kevin Anderson adds another likable bastard to his credits.
The actors do what they can with the script. They are all great companions for the journey, but the writer either had no destination in mind or the chose several different destinations and couldn't decide on any of them. While the characters are trying to reach the mystery destination, they are suddenly required to act like idiots. There are at least two or three incidents where the behavior of the heroine and her "support" is SO stupid, I wanted to kill them. There is the obligatory car that won't start. Is this an unwritten law in filmdom? After a certain, terrifying scene, the "good guys" SIT DOWN AND CHAT when they should be on the run--and it's very clear that this lull in the action was inserted only so the "bad guys" would have time to catch up with them. Several major pieces of information are introduced--and then discarded. A certain action--the kicking of the jukebox at Beth's diner-- is repeated over and over. It is built up in such a way that I really was waiting to see how it would be used in the denouement...but it is never used. A major player (about whom some scary things are revealed and about whom questions are raised) is taken out at the beginning of act three. Then we learn nothing more about him.
Up to the end of act two, even with all the idiot actions, the movie was Hitchcockian, intriguing and had me salivating for the answers. Who is Jack? Who is Peter? Why surfing? What's on the freakin' disk?
And then....Hitchock leaves the project and Steven Seagal comes in to create lots of mayhem, holocausts and insanity. We get no payoff (unless explosions and shootings are your idea of payoff). No explanations, no tie ups, NOTHING. Lots of loose ends getting wet so that Radha Mitchell's character can be the butt of a soggy director's joke.
Now, some will say that I am immature if I can't stand loose ends. But a picture that sets itself up to be Hitchcock should follow in his footsteps and tie up the major loose ends, even if it leaves the minor ones untied. I expected thoughtful, intriguing answers that might even create more questions about everything that went before (a la "Mullholland Drive" or "Memento" for example). Instead, I got explosions, cheap shots, death and destruction...which leads me to believe, the people responsible didn't know what to do with their classy material, so they just went for the lowest common denominator. If they wanted to film a cheap action thriller, then it should have been a cheap action thriller on page one. I was tantalized for ninety minutes with the promise of really good answers. And the promise was broken leaving me stranded in the desert without a road map.
Not a very good ending to what had been an exciting road trip.
BUT--once we get to where we are going, there had better have been a good reason for us to go. If the hotel has no running water, the main tourist attraction is closed and the food inedible, the rest of the trip sours a little bit.
"When Strangers Appear" was like an almost good road trip: interesting companions whom you learn more about as the story progresses, interesting side trips in the plot and a couple of great twists and turns...and then you arrive at your destination and...no running water (well, maybe too much running water--those of you who have seen it may know what I mean), no tourist attraction and lousy food.
I was actually surprised by the actors. Barry Watson and Josh Lucas aren't Hanks or Newman or Penn, but they managed to create creepily likable characters who kept dragging me back and forth to their side. Radha Mitchell was annoyingly spunky but at least she kept it consistent (or tried to--her character was required to do some things that were stupid) and Kevin Anderson adds another likable bastard to his credits.
The actors do what they can with the script. They are all great companions for the journey, but the writer either had no destination in mind or the chose several different destinations and couldn't decide on any of them. While the characters are trying to reach the mystery destination, they are suddenly required to act like idiots. There are at least two or three incidents where the behavior of the heroine and her "support" is SO stupid, I wanted to kill them. There is the obligatory car that won't start. Is this an unwritten law in filmdom? After a certain, terrifying scene, the "good guys" SIT DOWN AND CHAT when they should be on the run--and it's very clear that this lull in the action was inserted only so the "bad guys" would have time to catch up with them. Several major pieces of information are introduced--and then discarded. A certain action--the kicking of the jukebox at Beth's diner-- is repeated over and over. It is built up in such a way that I really was waiting to see how it would be used in the denouement...but it is never used. A major player (about whom some scary things are revealed and about whom questions are raised) is taken out at the beginning of act three. Then we learn nothing more about him.
Up to the end of act two, even with all the idiot actions, the movie was Hitchcockian, intriguing and had me salivating for the answers. Who is Jack? Who is Peter? Why surfing? What's on the freakin' disk?
And then....Hitchock leaves the project and Steven Seagal comes in to create lots of mayhem, holocausts and insanity. We get no payoff (unless explosions and shootings are your idea of payoff). No explanations, no tie ups, NOTHING. Lots of loose ends getting wet so that Radha Mitchell's character can be the butt of a soggy director's joke.
Now, some will say that I am immature if I can't stand loose ends. But a picture that sets itself up to be Hitchcock should follow in his footsteps and tie up the major loose ends, even if it leaves the minor ones untied. I expected thoughtful, intriguing answers that might even create more questions about everything that went before (a la "Mullholland Drive" or "Memento" for example). Instead, I got explosions, cheap shots, death and destruction...which leads me to believe, the people responsible didn't know what to do with their classy material, so they just went for the lowest common denominator. If they wanted to film a cheap action thriller, then it should have been a cheap action thriller on page one. I was tantalized for ninety minutes with the promise of really good answers. And the promise was broken leaving me stranded in the desert without a road map.
Not a very good ending to what had been an exciting road trip.