This is the latest Sarah Michelle Gellar horror movie, which I guess she has to make every four years because she was Buffy and if she's not in a horror movie then we'll be overrun with vampires or ghosts or something. Which is probably a lot more snarky than she deserves. I thought THE GRUDGE was one of the best ghost/horror movies in years and I didn't see THE RETURN, but no one else did either from what I understand. None of that matters here -- this is her new movie which is headed straight for dvd March 9th.
Anyway....here's the story. Jess (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is married to Ryan (Michael Landes). He's, like, the perfect husband because he lights candles and writes her loves poems. But Ryan has a dark, brooding brother, Roman (played by Lee Pace from the great series PUSHING DAISIES) staying with them. Roman is a bad guy -- he just got out of jail and he makes Jess feel nervous, so she gets Ryan to agree to get Roman out of the house as soon as possible. Ryan hears this and takes off. Roman chases him and they get into a car accident where both of them as severely injured. Roman wakes up. Ryan stays in a coma. Except now Roman thinks he is Ryan! Has the spirit of Ryan taken over Roman? Is something more sinister going on?
So how is it? It's okay. Not great. Not horrible. Just kind of okay.
(I don't want to give away the twists, etc, so I'm not going to go into a full discussoin of the 2nd and 3rd acts.)
So why is this movie, with a cool idea, good structure, and a good cast, just okay? The problem is that they don't do a good enough job of EXPLOITING THE CONCEPT. Now let's look at the first act, which is the build into the accident and the reveal that Roman now thinks he is Ryan. (This part is easy to talk about since I don't have to worry about giving anything away that will spoil the movie.) The set up is pretty simple: Ryan is the good husband, Roman is the bad boy. Now how do they show this? Ryan writes love notes and lights candles. Jess says he's so amazing and too good for him, blah blah blah. But that really seems to be it. Light a few candles and write a love note and you're the most perfect guy in the world? Seriously? Now I don't have anything against candles or love notes, but do they really get at why Jess loves him so deeply? Or are they a pretty generic, superficial way of saying he's a nice guy? This isn't a small thing -- their relationship, she love for him becomes incredibly important after the accident as she grieves and wants to believe that Ryan could have come back in his brother's body. So she should just love him, like hey, they're married and he's a good guy -- this should be a deep, spiritual thing, something strong enough that we would want (or not want) to believe with her. Instead it's generic. It's blah.
And for that matter, how bad is Roman? Well, Jess thinks he's creepy. We're told that he was in jail, but I don't think we're ever told what for. Jess says it was pretty bad (she is a lawyer and pleaded his case), but we don't see it, we don't hear it -- it's just this weird implied thing. So is there anything he does do that's really bad, anything to make us understand how much of a bad boy he really is other than some brooding and sex with some random chick? No, not really. They could almost have made him a stoner brother who just sits on the couch all day. That's about how much bad they show him being.
So...let's sum up. The whole idea of the movie revolves around how one brother is the good brother (the perfect husband, etc) and the other brother is the bad brother. Except the good brother is just this guy who lights some candles and the bad brother is a guy who just broods. So while they should be total opposites, instead they are just blandly different. So when she starts to wonder if the bad brother is really possessed by her husband, she's really just giving in to a blandly different version of her husband. How much more thrilling would it have been to really make them opposites? Show us why her husband isn't just a nice guy, but why she would love him passionately, absolutely. He isn't just a nice guy, he's the guy who completes her, the guy who saves her. And the brother is the complete opposite -- he's the meanest son of a bi*ch you could imagine. While the husband makes her strong and feel whole, the bad brother does everything to tear her apart. He does everything he can to make her absolutely hate him. Now the accident happens and the possession and she begins to wonder if it could really be her husband...she begins to fall for the man she hates so much...
Now you're getting at it. This isn't the only time the movie doesn't really delve into the concepts it uses. Even this element of possession isn't very much. For a time, with her husband lying in a coma, when you would think people would wonder about souls and spirits and the afterlife and all that, she never really seems to reach out in that direction. Even the question of what's going on -- is he possessed or is it something else -- never plays out in anything other than the most simple ways.
It's a shame. I'm a fan of SMG and Lee Pace. And it isn't a bad movie, but it could have been a lot better if they'd been willing to dig a little deeper into the material.
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