24th June 2016, 12:16 PM
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 | Cultist on the Rampage | | Join Date: May 2011 Location: Leeds, UK | |
I KNOW WHO KILLED ME – Was reminded of this one by Dem's recentish review, so pressed 'play' on Netflix and hoped for the best. I saw it maybe five or six years ago, and, as I sat back with a huge bottle of cheap cider and my laptop, remembered feeling 'there was something about it' at the time. Was pleasantly surprised to find that it lived up to my admittedly hazy expectations. L Lohan is a student who, after she's abducted by a serial killer and left for dead, seemingly takes on the identitiy of a stripper. There's the usual hand wringing around psychology and identity before the semi-surprising truth behind it all is revealed. 'I Know Who Killed Me' was panned by most critics on its release, but it's really pretty good. Most of the dis-factor was probably due to the presence of Lohan, and the fact that it's basically a trashy horror thriller that edged into the mainstream. It's not top flight material, but it's stylistically interesting, with a contrived colour scheme which tilts towards the pop theatrics of the Giallo, in keeping with its plotline. There's also some inexplicable but central supernatural / psychic stuff going on to explain Lohan's double-identity. Good, and worth watching if you have it at your disposal.
EYES WIDE SHUT – Kubrik's last film is a voyage through Tom Cruise's sex fantasies (read: mid life crisis). Cruise plays a doctor who, upset by wife Nicole Kidman's revelation that she might've cheated on him in the past had she had more of an opportunity, embarks on a night of erotic adventure after he bumps into a figure from his past. 'Eyes Wide Shut' unfolds elegantly through a tangle of diverging and converging narrative lines, but has something of the flavour of a film like 'After Hours' in that its protagonist has to work through a series of increasingly threatening tableaus to 'get back to the beginning'. At some points it feels like a big budget version of a nineties erotic thriller, then subverts this by throwing in gothic aspects which teeter on Euro-horror – the film's centre piece is a masked orgy, complete with a really prominent Franco-esque zoom-shot. If the events of 'Eyes Wide Shut' are a manifestation of the lead character's sexual subconscious, as is commonly supposed by critics, then you might raise an eyebrow at how vanilla it all is. But 'Eyes Wide Shut' isn't about immersing us in dirt, it's more a study of a relationship in jeopardy and a man's fear of his own lack of control, and the nerves it touches are more intimate, as is its gradually intensifying sinister edge.
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) as the scumbag-in-charge this time.
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