Untraceable, from Frequency and Fracture director Gregory Hoblit, is yet another of those movies featuring a cute but horrific serial killer fixated on a beautiful and intelligent female law officer. Joseph Cross, who played the gay writer Augusten Burroughs in Running with Scissors, is the sadistic killer. We know he's a baddie long before we see his face because in the opening sequence we've watched him electrocute a cute little kitty live on a Web site he's set up called 'Kill With Me.' Diane Lane plays the law officer, an FBI agent named Jennifer Marsh who specializes in tracking down perpetrators of cybercrime in the Pacific Northwest. When Cross's Web site—in which he goes from frying the kitty to torturing male victims to death live on a webcam—becomes a Web sensation, the hunt is on.
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Pictured: 'Field' of screams. Diane Lane in Untraceable.
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The movie is run-of-the-mill stuff—fairly entertaining but not particularly inventive—with the standard twists and turns. We know that at some point the killer's going to turn his attention to the smart but world-weary Jennifer, who's still mourning the death of her husband ( a fellow officer ) , and that he will use his superior geek intelligence to get to her ( portions of the plot seem to have been lifted whole cloth from Copycat and other serial-killer movies ) . The script—which makes some valid points about the unlimited censorship the wild, wild Web affords and its potential consequences—confuses that message by also letting the audience deplore torture yet see it in Technicolor close-up at the same time.
Even though Hoblit's movie is pretty much by-the-numbers, Diane Lane lifts it head and shoulders above where it deserves to be. Lane, a great screen actress, turns in another terrific, emotionally complex performance—reason enough to try out Untraceable. Lane is ably supported by Mary Beth Hurt, hunky Billy Burk, Tyrone Girodano ( the deaf actor who played the gay son in The Family Stone ) and Peter Lewis ( my ex-brother-in-law ) , who plays Lane's boss. Nice eerie music by Christopher Young, reminiscent of his score for Jennifer 8.
One thought above all kept coming back to me as I lay strapped in for the thrill ride that is director Jim Reeves and producer J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield: Hitchcock would have loved this—if for nothing else than for the ingenuous decision to shoot the movie within specific constraints as Hitchcock did in Lifeboat, Rope and Rear Window. Here, the entire movie is shot by one handheld digital camera ( though, apparently, different levels of these were employed ) . Though the movie played hell with my vertigo, this brilliant little idea has the effect of transforming the typical monster-attacks-Manhattan movie into nothing less than an instant classic of the genre. It's gimmicky, alright, but one that works on thrill-hungry audiences like a triple espresso of terror.
The set up for Cloverfield is simplicity itself—a going-away party for Rob ( Chicagoan Michael Stahl-David ) by a group of young Manhattanites being videotaped by one of them is interrupted when an unseen ( for a while ) monster attacks New York City. Once the attack starts, so does the fun and the vertigo and the special effects—and it's pretty much non-stop for the remaining 70 minutes. Screenwriter Drew Goddard and director Matt Reeves throw in enough creepy curves and audacious special effects to keep the suspense high. This is a movie stripped down to the basics—Monster Movie 101—it's just us with those clichéd survivors against that giant, lethal creature who's really, really pissed off. There's no attempt to do anything other than scare the bejesus out of susceptible audience members and keep us in suspense. This is as basic as the tagline for The Poseidon Adventure, which asked audiences members to blatantly decide, 'Who will survive?'
On that score, I'd say that Cloverfield is a monster-sized success. I found it to be the cinematic equivalent of Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds' broadcast, a big 'boo' of a movie, helped immeasurably by that refreshing one camera twist ( enough to almost single-handedly revive the moribund horror genre ) and canny enough to have redesigned it for the YouTube generation as well as for those elder folks like myself who still like a good ride on the roller coaster every once in a while.
Film Notes:
—Daniel G. Karslake fascinating, informative documentary, For the Bible Tells Me So, which explores the chasm between religious fundamentalists and homosexuality through the stories of five families confronting the issue, plays a return engagement in Chicago Jan. 25-31 at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State; www.siskelfilmcenter.com
—Two DVD releases of note: Rita Moreno, Jack Weston and Treat Williams star in the 1976 film version of gay playwright Terrence McNally's The Ritz. The movie—a comic farce set in a bathhouse—is highlighted by the exuberant Moreno as Googie Gomez, the ratty, over-the-top entertainer who steals the film with her rendition of Everything's Comin' Up Roses. Moreno's performance is worth the price of admission alone, as is the cast of towel-clad extras and the '70s-era decor and sexual mores. It's a piece of gay movie history worth checking out.
Also worth checking out is Personal Best, the 1982 classic of lesbian cinema that stars Mariel Hemingway, Patrice Donnelly and Scott Glenn. Writer-director Robert Towne made his directorial debut with this very sexy story of a young runner ( Hemingway ) who falls in love with her mentor ( Donnelly ) as the two compete for a spot at the Olympics. Things take a turn for the two when Hemingway's character falls under the spell of a coach ( played by ultra-sexy Glenn ) . The early love scenes between the two women, sensual and very frank for the time, were revelatory—although the about-face that Hemingway's character makes as the film progresses is a little harder to believe, not to mention heartbreaking. Both movies from Warner Home Video are making their DVD debuts.
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitytimes.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter Web site, where there is also ordering information on my new book of collected film reviews, Knight at the Movies 2004-2006.
