Secret Window (2004)

Review: written August 2010

The ending is the important thing…

Shades of Hitchcock, The Shining, and various other classics pervade this movie, based on a novella by Stephen King, given life by a somewhat surprisingly cast Johnny Depp. He is a writer, haunted by events 6 months previous, when he found his wife cheating on him, to a man she subsequently left him for. Now he lives a life of sloth and occasional unproductive bouts of writing in his cabin in the middle of nowhere... until a mysterious man called Shooter (an excellently ambiguous John Turturro) appears with a grudge to resolve. Shooter claims Depp stole one of his stories. Depp's journey to prove he didn't, brings him back into the life of his estranged wife (Mario Bello) and the new man in her life. Things get gradually weirder, and Depp starts to feel his life unravelling, even as he enlists the help of a bodyguard (Charles Dutton).

There's a nicely evoked sense of manufactured reality to the movie entirely in keeping with the tone of the movie. This is noticeable for example in the use of mirrors.. through which we travel into to find ourselves in the middle of something we thought we were merely seeing a reflection of, or see something we shouldn't be able to see. It's satisfyingly disquieting, and it's stylistic moments such as these which make the film a minor pleasure. That, and the rather excellent cast - Depp, Turturro and Bello all characteristically bring unique life to their roles. A Hitchockian beginning shifts in tone as the movie progresses, and the ending is telegraphed enough to be not much of a surprise to many I would imagine.. however, it's relatively entertaining getting there. In any case, we're not asked to spend too long on the journey, the movie being edited down to the bones of the story to keep you engaged. Good thing too, since there are holes here and the one note trick would get wearying after a while... but the ending works, regardless if you see it coming or not... and as the character says, the ending is the most important thing...

In Bluray, the picture is incredibly crisp and the atmospheric shots of the cabin on the lake terrific, and we can see every whisker of Depp's bizarre almost-beard. Sound design adds to the odd knock and rumble here and there eliciting the occasional creepiness. All in all, not perfect perhaps, but perfectly fine for an evening's viewing.