The Night Listener (2006)***
Grabbed this off the library shelves this evening having never heard of it. The cover had “Two thumbs WAY up!” – Ebert and Roeper, so I figured it was worth a free checkout even if it was likely to be mediocre.
The good news is that it’s a bit better than mediocre. It’s squarely in the modern vein of psychological horror flicks aimed at adults, so Hitchcock is an obvious predecessor. Is it trite to say that Hollywood seems to have decided to churn out only two types of horror flicks these days? Torture porn for the kids and Shyamalan retreads for the adults.
Anyway, in thinking about the review and looking into the flick online a bit, I came across a fact that had grabbed me when I first picked up the case, but had forgotten during viewing: it’s based on a book by Armistead Maupin, the chronicler of gay culture in San Francisco whose Tales of the City are epic fun. And the book it’s based on apparently is an autobiographical account of something weird and scary that really did happen to Maupin.
The movie tells the story of a writer (a thankfully understated Robin Williams) who gets a copy of a memoir penned by a 14 year old boy, a victim of sexual abuse. The memoir writing is mature beyond the author’s years, and the writer strikes up a long distance friendship with the kid and his foster mother, who basically has the kid in hiding so that his parents or their pedophile friends can never find him. As he grows to care about the boy more and more, the writer begins to question some of the basic facts about the kid’s life and story, and the suspense builds when he travels to Wisconsin to investigate.
It’s not a great movie by any stretch, but there’s some genuinely spooky moments scattered throughout, some great images seemingly right out of Vertigo, and the director has a nice patience with the story—it seems to unfold organically (and a bit slowly) and yet the whole movie is barely 80 minutes long. This shortness in the end might leave the viewer with a sense of “that’s it?” especially with the somewhat abrubt conclusion, but these weren’t major flaws, IMO. Worth seeing.
3 comments:
"a thankfully understated Robin Williams"
When I realized it was his picture on the box, I had my doubts - you put it perfectly!
Saw this a few years ago - you're right, moves a bit slow, but the unresolved ending creates such a tension, that it alone made the film worthwhile.
Is the kid real??? I'm still trying to figure it out.
Huh. When a movie has big stars like Robin Williams and Toni Colette and you've never heard of it, that usually says terrible clunker.
I'm curious about this because I loved the Tales of the City books -- and because Robin Williams is thankfully understated.
Post a Comment