A tight twist in taut tale
I’VE SEEN some pretty desperate Nicolas Cage films but was still surprised to see fellow Oscar-winner Helen Hunt’s name attached to this low-budget, straight-tohome release. The opening sequence isn’t reassuring.A sinister score and spooky aerial shots of a rural American town appear to be setting up a hackneyed horror.
But there is far more to this twisty thriller than meets the eye.
The As Good As It Gets actress plays Jackie Harper, who we meet as she’s flipping breakfast pancakes for her surly teenage son Connor (Judah Lewis).
Her embittered detective husband
Greg (Jon Tenney) isn’t any help, refusing to get up from his sofa bed when his wife and son engage in a row about her recent affair.
Then again, Greg has a lot on his plate.A serial killer appears to have returned to the town, 15 years after he was sent to prison.
When the police find his calling card in the woodland where a 12-year-old boy disappeared, they suspect a copycat killer.
A series of mysterious incidents add to the tension.
Cutlery disappears from a drawer and Greg finds himself locked in a cupboard chasing an escaped family pet (top marks to the filmcrew’s hamster wrangler).
After playing on horror tropes, the film seems to overturn paranormal explanations with a sudden midpoint twist.
This, and the way the film neatly ties together its subplots, are best left as a surprise.
Hunt has acted with far bigger stars, but I don’t remember any of her previous films being as tightly plotted as this one.