re:mote voices

Title: Secret Window
Cast: Johnny Depp, John Turturro, Maria Bello, Timothy Hutton
Director: David Koepp

Secret Window is the latest film to come off the work of Stephen King, based on one of his short stories. Which at least narrows the scope from the farcical layering of Dream Catcher, which was the last big screen work based on King’s material. While Dream Catcher increasingly became an incoherent mess, which came across as amateurish and unwatchable, at least Secret Window endeavours to maintain a greater sense of lucidity, for the most part. On the basic plot of Johnny Depp playing a famous horror writer, living in the middle of nowhere, caught up in the midst of a messy divorce, confronted with the sinister figure of John Torturro’s adversary, who claims that Depp has stolen his story and ruined it. From this a sinister atmosphere is created, where Torturro’s ability to appear just at the right point to upset Depp, is worked quite well. However this is of course based on a Stephen King story, so the “twist” probably doesn’t really come as much of a surprise, and is in fact where the film pretty much loses it. So that from this point we are in a territory which is more reminiscent of Dream Catcher, and a film that might just have worked goes out the window.