IMDb plot summary: A couple rents out a room to a mysterious young man, who may or may not be guilty of a series of grisly neighborhood murders.
Directed by David Ondaatje. Starring Alfred Molina, Hope Davis, Shane West, and Donal Logue.
(Vague spoilers ahead about the movie's ending.)
All right, I'll grant you that the twist caught me off guard, which is always kind of fun, but there's too much about this movie that made me roll my eyes. The writing is awkward, most of the acting is really cheesy, and all the deliberate misdirects make the twist (and the wholly unnecessary twist-on-the-twist) seem cheap when it's finally revealed.
The bright spot in this movie, however, is Hope Davis, who puts in a surprisingly empathetic performance from the get-go as a woman who's clearly psychologically fragile. Her dialogue is still awkward and strange, but she does her best with what she's given and it kind of works.
(Random side fact: The book this was based on is public domain and free for Kindle, so I've downloaded it and will get around to reading it someday. So that'll be a fun comparison.)
1.5 stars.
Flickchart: #1532 out of 2067, below Facing the Giants and above Bewitched.
Buy the DVD on Amazon.
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