Wes Craven’s voice used to be so original. In films such as Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, he questioned the ideologies from which nuclear family life was built by throwing his protagonists into situations that forced them to fight back, kill, cry a lot, and finally become antagonists as unsavory as the evils they were fighting. Skip ahead to 2005: the one-two punch of Cursed and Red Eye confirms Craven’s current fears as involving scripts with plausible third acts. Most frustrating of all, Red Eye displayed some real potential during it’s opening minutes, when it seemed that the McAdams character’s neuroses might have turned Red Eye into the first ever suspense film built around the societally pervasive habit of excessive people pleasing. A “people-pleasing suspense film.” Now that’s a tagline.
by Jason Woloski | Source: Dreamworks 35mm print
28 Aug 2005 1:09 PM | Submit Comment