Secret Window Year: 2004 Director: David Koepp Written by: David Koepp Threat: Psychopath Weapon of Choice: Screwdriver Based upon: novella - "Secret Window, Secret Garden" - Stephen King IMDb page:

Other movies in this series:
None

Rish's Reviews
Novelist Mort Rainey awakens to an unpleasant visitor at his door, a man calling himself John Shooter and claiming Rainey ripped off one of his stories. Already in the midst of personal turmoil, Rainey finds out from the increasingly-psychotic Shooter just how hard life can get. And stuff.
This was based on a novella in Stephen King's 1990 collection "Four Past Midnight," which has already seen one extraordinarily mediocre adaptation, The Langoliers, made from it. It was a story King wrote in between Misery and The Dark Half, and there are strong similarities to both novels (especially Dark Half). The film also seemed to have a couple of things in common with The Shining and Cape Fear.
The cast is small, as it mostly takes place out at Rainey's lakeside cottage. Johnny Depp, fresh from the success of Pirates of the Caribbean, creates another memorable, quirky performance in bringing Mort Rainey to life. You pity him, laugh at him, cheer for him, and despair for him. And more. The rest of the cast have less interesting things to do, though John Tuturro is appropriately menacing as Shooter. I've never liked Maria Bello (not even in her "E.R." days), but I liked her in this. It would've been tempting to make her the typical monstrously bitchy adulterous wife, but for some reason, they left her sympathetic, semi-repentant, and likable. Timothy Hutton, who also appeared in the King adaptation The Dark Half, was sort of a douche, pardon my French.
I've never been a big fan of the book. I always felt it was cruel and sad and not a heck of a lot of fun. Oddly, Secret Window the film is cruel and sad and not a heck of a lot of fun. David Koepp, who wrote Jurassic Park, Stir of Echoes, and Panic Room, is a very talented writer (he also wrote Spider-man and Carlito's Way) and though I'm not as big a fan of him as a director, he did an admirable job with what seems to be a limited story.
Some might question if it's a horror film or not. One of the best horror movies of last year was Identity, which has a lot in common with this film, actually. I won't go into why, but they're both similar types of films: what are commonly referred to as Psychological Thrillers or Suspense films. No problem. The movie itself is not really scary (although pretty intense for a PG-13, I think), but it is interesting.
A couple of subplots start and then end abruptly without much closure, which I imagine is due to editing. The most interesting change is the ending. I won't spoil it by saying that it took an unhappy ending and made it happy or took a happy ending and made it unhappy, but it was an unexpected change in tone. Especially for a Hollywood movie.
But it's not a great film. A lot of nothing happens for a long time, and the ending is extraorinarily unsatisfying. I've heard people say that it's worth seeing for Depp's performance, and I'd be inclined to agree. Looking over his filmography, he's really done a lot to pay back the Horror genre after getting his start back in Nightmare on Elm Street. Good work, buddy.
Posted: March 23, 2004

The tyranist's thoughts
I've liked Depp for a long time and I've liked Stephen King for a long time. They finally get together and somehow I manage to miss it in the theatre. At any rate, I got around to this one far too late, but I'm not really all that sad about not seeing it on the big screen. In retrospect, it just doesn't seem like it would have made a difference.
The original story isn't King's strongest, and is not even the strongest in the collection it was published in. In fact, I thought it was pretty forgettable. Still, King's worst is better than a lot of the crap that gets made in these days of straight-to-video horror. Add to that Depp's skill as an actor and this is worth checking out.
I found the movie alternately moody and tense. Not that there was any real sense of danger or even mystery (spoiled perhaps by having read the story before), but there were some effective moments and even when the action lacked, there was always plenty to look at aesthetically. The writing seemed relatively faithful to King and watching Mort Rainey under increasing pressure was interesting. Really, I guess, this was just pretty middle-of-the-road.
You don't have to see this if you're a King or Johnny Depp fan, but you'd probably enjoy it a little. I found it to be decent, but not terribly memorable and I probably won't be telling anyone that they really ought to check it out.
Posted: August 9, 2004

Total Skulls: 12

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc.
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?