Coffin Rock (2009)

The simplest answer isn't always the easiest answer

A couple, Robert and Jessica, near the coast in Australia, have a large house and established business to their name but want to fill in the whole picture with a child before biological clocks run out. The wife is enthusiastic but the husband feels some shame from his boys failing to swim the channel home. They go to a clinic to check sperm count when the receptionist, Evan, takes a liking to Jessica from a distance as she waits in the lobby. He travels to their little fishing village and blends in with a job at the local crayfish factory. She's a simple but outgoing small town woman in a largely male workforce who's only dealt with the occasional jerk in a bar. Evan acts imposing towards her all the while berating and muttering to himself. Soon enough he waits till she's drunk and emotionally torn with her husband and they have a spur-of-the-moment quickie.



She flat out states her regrets for their brief entanglement but Evan quickly turns emotionally attached to the point of obsession. It's more than just puppy love but some kind of psychotic abandonment issue, along with volatile tendencies of anger. Jessie has a conundrum on her hands, as someone else spied the incident, she doesn't want her husband to find out and she's now pregnant with the strong possibility Evan's the father. Robbie sees that she's pregnant and gets their friends and family excited over what he assumes is his. Though the best news turns to the worst as Jessie is getting shaken up with random visits from Evan that are getting more and more dangerous with not only herself but loved ones caught in the middle as well.

The film turns over to the destruction of relationships with one side worse and far more calculative in their deceit than the other to the point of a cat and mouse game looking like the former animal upgraded to a starved lion. It makes the experience more depressing than a challenge to correct what went wrong or coming with something more to leave with for contemplation for the audience besides the obvious: I'm not going let that happen to me! It was strange to set the tone with some authenticity, only to then turn over to an over-the-top, somewhat straightforward psychotic thriller of the cinema invention kind. It made the story go from marching to the beat of its own drum to producing shuffled around scenarios that only come with the territory of the genre.

The movie gives little to grab onto in the downward spiral after tentatively going through the messages of trusting strangers too soon and cheating aspects. It makes the experience harder to watch as it shifts more and more over the deep end with little fighting chance in sight to the point of begging, squirming and pleading of the lead actress. Not to mention, the motivations, as kooky as they are, aren't always outlined--such as the initial hookup being jumped into like an everyday thing, or why others were terrorized or made to suffer. The film creates some fear of the what-if-it-happened-to-you type, though momentarily grabbing your chest from the possible what-if compared to actually watching it play out are two different things. It turns into one stupid move after the next when more than enough opportunities are presented that are usually of the simple communicating kind. Honesty versus hurting someone? This was more than just a little case of irresponsibility.



As a thriller it's paced well enough and there are still some scenes that carry tension, some here and there memorable quality and an uncomfortable feeling as she gets stalked and pushed against a wall with an omnipresent breath in her face. There's a different range of emotions used as the story progresses from, Lisa Chappell, as Jess, being the regular, easy going woman and supportive partner at work and at home, to then trying to get out of a mud slicked hole with her hands behind her back. I'm disappointed that they didn't make her a little more tough with her above average height and confident ability to work side by side men in the town. Sam Parsonson, as Evan with an Irish accent, definitely takes a few of the scenes all out and manages to create some distinctions to his personality that come with a few unpredictable situations of what he'll do next. This gives room to make the characters and the setting carry some realism--even starting out with light drama and their day to day lives, some humor and raw innocence--though it still carries some melodramatic and exaggerated scenes past a certain point to up the ante and make it more of a cinematic experience than something that you'd actually believe could happen.

Rating: 6.5/10

Director: Rupert Glasson
Stars: Lisa Chappell, Sam Parsonson, Robert Taylor
Link: IMDB

The Caller (2011)

A magnet for disaster

This is a drama/mystery/thriller about a woman named Mary (Rachelle Lefevre) who moves into a new apartment in the capital of Puerto Rico and is trying to start her new life over again after finalizing paper work from a controlling partner. Though the tiny island might not be the best place to make that happen. She goes to classes, talks to the friendly gardener George (Luis Guzman) and converses on an old land line phone--remember those?--with a woman named Rose (Lorna Raver) who's confused and looking for a man named Bobby.

The calls become more persistent and personal with the coincidences between them mounting up. Each woman thinks the other loco but try to find a middle ground for information that makes them at odds for the time line they share since Rose thinks she's in the late '70s. Rose tries to show she exists by describing evidence around the house to prove to Mary she's been there. Meanwhile other people demand attention from the curly haired blue-eyed wonder with her ex Steven (Ed Quinn) who's stalking her despite a restraining order. She manages to form a budding friendship with a teacher named John (Stephen Moyer) at the school from getting jumpy about supposedly seeing someone in her car. The audience isn't sure of the big picture at first and this just looks like a woman with the worst of luck. Though her new situation might just give her the know how and empowerment she needs to see a light at the other end of the tunnel...or possibly just a darker side of herself to do what needs to be done.

The viewer is thrown some distractions with the goings on in Mary's life, but the one with the greatest power to control it comes and goes. The pacing moves gradually to give the story some time to grow and to put together what's culminating. This could have played the is-she-imagining it, is-she-not angle a little better. Sometimes not so obvious clues happen and she believes, while other times, obvious things happen and she's oblivious. People are there one moment, gone the next and every time Mary tries to get her life back in order, she gets knocked back a few steps until the main realization fully sets in. What holds this back is the audience at points is given too much time to think of the possibilities, which for the cinematic experience expands your imagination no doubt and was definitely a neat idea but how the mechanics line up leaves some loopholes. Not to mention when some red herrings come her way to throw you off scent, as well as a series of what if questions happen at the same time that make this go from an exceptional case to astronomical, though amusing nonetheless even if it's not likely to happen to you.

The character development is a little bumpy in that the main actress will go from calm and rational to jumpy and terrified, sometimes with back to back scenes that make pinning down her demeanor and temperament a little inconsistent for relating points. The abusive and manipulative character Steven seems like a caricature ripped right out of an old Lifetime movie--don't ask how I know that--the way he does what he wants and especially when he wants because he's a testosterone fueled man with no one to put him in his place--he's just missing a flannel and a permanent beer in one hand. The setting in Puerto Rico is partly utilized though isn't concentrated on unless it pertains to the story. Nearly all of the characters are from different nationalities, much like the commonwealth's own history. On the other hand--like Mario Bava's ''The Telephone"--the phone ringing becomes a grating echo in your ear for both the intruding sound and for what's to come. The woman on the other end has a sweet but also disturbing voice that starts to become more and more desperate and dangerous and might not have been calling the wrong number after all.

Rating: 6.5/10

Director: Matthew Parkhill (Dot the I)
Stars: Rachelle Lefevre, Stephen Moyer, Luis Guzman, Ed Quinn, Lorna Raver
Link: IMDB

The Resident (2011)

Somebody likes your toothbrush

This is a American shot thriller from a Finnish director and put out by the recently revived Hammer Film--yep, the British production company known for its atmospheric horrors. "The Resident" gives nods to "Single White Female," "One Hour Photo" and "Fatal Attraction," where it's a dark tale of infatuation that builds and builds into a roaring obsession due to an object of desire that's out of physical reach.

Some look for specific qualities or rewards in relationships than others, such as a momentary bit of comfort, physical release or warmth and security. There's a middle ground where you both meet in agreement, yet there are those that want things to fall specifically in place and only go the way they want them to. There's going to be zero compromise with those aggressively tuned people, just a one track freight train of a strong personality and another unsuspecting person caught frozen on the tracks.

A woman named Juliet, played by Hilary Swank, is looking for an apartment after hitting a rough spot. She works by day as a doctor and after living in her new residence for a short while she's being watched with a privy eye at night. This has a few unsettling moments, as the watcher slowly works themselves up to get close enough to know what the bristles of her toothbrush feel like, as well as the brand of her undergarments. There's no real surprise as to who it is as there's only four main characters shown and three of them quickly seem unlikely. The filmmakers realized about a third of the way in and dropped the whole mystery element in order to escalate the encroaching visits in first person to Juliet's apartment. If it wasn't predictable enough, she eventually starts to suspect something's amiss and decides to take matters into her own hands in order to figure out the truth about what's going bump at night and why she feels so weird in the morning. Though the closer she gets, it causes the person to step out from the shadows for a finale that wraps up somewhat abruptly.

"The Resident" has a formula that's been done before with films that deal with unabated fixations that lead to stalking and voyeurism. This was a common template for slasher films, though this is definitely missing the gore and guts, but intact is the cinematic thrills. This does take it another step further with a few memorable scenes that push things over the top even if it mostly hints at them without actually revealing them head-on in explicit detail. That seems to be the main purpose: to show some suspenseful scenes and to cut and paste characters into scenarios in order to make that happen, as the story itself felt straightforward and ultimately inevitable. This might be effective towards creeping out your squeamish girlfriend, as it gives paranoid thought to sleeping alone and putting blind trust into strangers, otherwise there's not a whole lot of substance here to mine or to come back to for replay value.

Rating: 5/10

Director: Antti Jokinen
Stars: Hilary Swank, Jeffery Dean Morgan, Christopher Lee
Link: IMDB