Sunday, October 17, 2010

Hallowe'en Countdown Day 17

The Secret Window

Plot: Mort is a writer who's life just fell apart. His wife has divorced him and now he's being stalked by a guy who claims he ripped off one of his stories.  Soon strange things start to happen, his dog ends up butchered, his house set fire too and the people around him begin to get killed.  Mort's on the edge and there seems to be a secret in the garden.

Johnny Depp plays the lead in this Stephen King story.  We see the story through the eyes of a character who has nothing left to live for but his word; and even that has started to become doubtful. Shot in dream sequences and flashbacks, you're never too sure what the truth is until the very end.
Stephen King is no stranger to the theme of the isolated writer goes mad, as he did this in The Shining and The Dark Half as well.
It's a film about trust/lies (lies we tell ourselves) and sub-plotted by addiction.  I've always been one for stories that lend themselves to madness and nightmares then splatter films, even with the amount of gore in it, Secret Window is able to keep the disturbia firmly in the front.