Jim's Film Festival Sneak Preview for Saturday, April 4th

Film: Surveillance

Future Screenings:
Surveillance - Today, 9:30PM at Prince Music Theater; Sun, 4/5/09, 2:30PM at Ritz 5

Surveillance
I watched this movie late at night and tried to go to sleep directly afterwards. But it had so disturbed me, I ended up staying awake an extra hour or so. What do you expect from a movie directed and co-written by David Lynch's daughter? Jennifer Lynch (who was born right here in Philly, btw) has made a film here with similar subject matter, and even a similar cast, to a film her father would make, but she has a much more straightforward storytelling and filmmaking style. Julia Ormond and Bill Pullman play FBI agents who arrive at a remote rural town to investigate a series of murders just committed there, apparently by a pair of serial killers they've been trying to capture for some time. There were three survivors of the murder spree: an 8-year-old girl (Ryan Simpkins) who was on vacation with her family, a cop (Kent Harper, who also co-wrote and co-produced the film), and a young woman (Pell James) who was traveling with her boyfriend (both of them drug addicts). The FBI agents put the survivors in three different rooms for their interrogations. Ormond's character talks to the little girl, the local sheriff (Michael Ironside) talks to the cop, and two more officers talk to the drug addict, while Pullman's character watches all the interrogations from a separate room via surveillance cameras, occasionally prompting the survivors with questions or comments of his own. As the questioning goes on, we begin to piece together what happened, from the survivors' answers, and from the flashbacks that accompany, and often contradict, them. We quickly discover that the killers weren't the only guilty ones here; nearly all of the characters have twisted, disturbing secrets in their recent pasts that highlight the darkest parts of human nature.

Surveillance is a tense, suspenseful thriller that is also a shocking, brutal examination of violence and human perversion. The cast, which also includes French Stewart and Cheri Oteri, is odd but excellent, with many of the actors playing effectively against type. The film takes a twist near the end which I kind of saw coming (my exact thought about it began, "Wouldn't it be fucked up if..."), but which I still found mind-blowing and powerful. I highly recommend Surveillance. Just be prepared for a harrowing experience.

Image Credit: Flickr user pedrosimoes7