Undescribable Perfection

A lot of fun.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This couldn't have been a Lifetime movie. But it was. This makes two -as far as I know- Lifetime thrillers that are not essentially remakes of every other Lifetime thriller, and are unusually engaging. The reviews above give a good sense of the plot. And some of the irate and morally offended viewers give the quite reliable impression that this is a bent, unconventional and more-than-mildly-incorrect little picture. You don't expect stuff this dark in TV movies, and certainly not on Lifetime. But in this case that's what you get. The sordid plot is not the only virtue of this flick: it's very well put together montage-wise, and in this respect has the look of a good theatrical release. Julia Stiles is, as always, a thoroughly accomplished actor.The other unexpectedly good Lifetime movie to which I refer above is Ladies Night, with a remarkable performance by Paul Michael Glaser.

As a Julia Stiles fan, I couldn't resist seeing her in an early "bad girl" role. And she is awfully good being bad. Her mood swings and fits of rage, occasional sweetness - and lust - are amazing for an 18 year-old - I doubt anyone else could have brought this part off at that age. She does the job of a badly disturbed young woman very well indeed. Kudos to Julia. Yes, the plot is close to "Electra" and uses many Hitchcockian type shots - but the film is far too episodic to be a Hitchcock rip-off. And what serious murder mystery does NOT use Hitchock's techniques these days? Remember Brian de Palma? He made a career out of it. Now, the plot has been discussed endlessly here, so, in a nutshell, the film concerns itself with a very dysfunctional family living in a ghastly suburban "gated" community near Los Angeles, cut off from the real world. After the brutal death of her mother, Stiles takes over the family from her weak-kneed daddy - and also his bed. Although there is no overt nudity, adultery plays its part, as does incest. A second murder (Stiles), as well as a detective who gets it ALL wrong help confuse us as to the real question: Who committed the murder of the mother? Well, if you don't want to know stop reading - but so many people have gotten it wrong, I felt I must explain. Everything points to Stiles as the killer - she hates her mother, and so has motive - and she also does a fine job of being . . . well . . . wicked. She commits two violent acts and lusting for her father adds to her seeming guilt. But there are a few clues you should look for here: Her mother was having an affair with a golf freak neighbor, an affair that she ends by telling him that she won't run off with him (and then has sex with him anyway - go figure), then refuses to answer his phone calls (we know they are his as he leaves no message on the machine, not wanting daddy to hear them). When the break-in leading to Mom's demise occurs, it is a golf ball that breaks the window allowing entry. Second, when Stiles goes out in the rain, and down in the basement to find her suitcase, the look of surprise on her face at opening it is a giveaway. We guess what's in the suitcase - she does not know. When her sister discovers the suitcase and what is inside she finds a Greek Drama Mask - with a frown (and a lot of blood). This has been missing and is the murder weapon. The sister looks very horrified - but it gives her ideas. As to the cops, the detective - Michael Parks - in a hard-to-hear scene, has the sense to ask the school principal about Stiles' attendance record, which apparently is OK, as we never hear of it again - giving Stiles an alibi. When Stiles is murdered it is with another Greek Mask - this time with a smile - so there are two murder weapons - the second "smile" mask is on the stand next to where the "frown" mask was, and easily available. BUT NO GOLF BALL IS PRESENT. Obviously the little sister has killed Stiles. But did Stiles kill her Mom? No. Mom was killed by her jilted lover, who broke in by tossing a golf ball through a window, then, grabbing the nearest heavy object (the mask) he bashes her brains in. The little sister is a copy-cat killer, and Stiles suffers her needless "revenge." The plot twists in this movie are a bit disturbing and this is not a film for kiddies. But for a low budget independent flick, it does a very good job of taking us for an eerie, violent, sometimes sexual, but always mysterious ride.

I get more and more respect for Julia Stiles, the more movies I see with her. Initially, I considered her rather boring and not even particularly pretty, but now that I've seen a wide selection of her choice of roles, I find her growing on me in a big way! She's been in Shakespeare movies and she's generally not afraid to tackle difficult, uncommercial and controversial material. Save The Last Dance was a great experience for me; I could watch it over and over. So of course I also had to get Wicked. In fact, after looking for it for a long time, I was finally able to buy it as a second-hand DVD from a friend.The movie was something quite different than I expected. I thought it was going to have supernatural elements, but it didn't. Instead it was a fairly low-key drama about how social and especially familial misery is perpetuated. How people continue down bad roads because they mimic what they see their role models (usually older family members) do.The general structure of the movie is that of a murder mystery, and a quite effective one. Ellie's mother is killed, and seemingly everyone in the family and communal vicinity are unstable enough to be suspects. Was it the baby-sitter, the father or the neighbor? Or was it Ellie herself, whose relationship with her mother was particularly bad, even hateful? There seems, from the user comments here, to be differing opinions about who the murderer was, because the end of the movie is not very specific about the first murder. Was it Ellie or her younger sister? In my opinion, it makes by far the most sense if it was Ellie. The younger sister ended up killing Ellie, of course, but there is no logic to her being the first murderer. Instead there is plenty of logic to Ellie being the first murderer, because her younger sister was just mimicking Ellie. In fact, I'm sure this is the case, because of the strangle-hold episode, where Ellie nearly strangles her sister - this would have "inspired" her sister to conclude that this was the proper sort of way to deal with a problematic situation. (Indeed, the first murder *cannot* have been committed by the younger sister, due to her reaction to her discovery of the suitcase containing the murder weapon.)So, the movie was about "monkey see, monkey do", or, as Shakespeare put it, "the evil that men do lives after them". We first have Ellie trying to replace her mother as the woman of the house, incl. all marital duties, and when she partially achieves this, her sister subsequently replaces Ellie's earlier role in the house, starting also to carry out the tasks that she saw Ellie do. Essentially, the youngest sister is trying to replace Ellie, just as Ellie tried to replace their mother, and using most of the same methods to achieve it - even murder.Yes, it is an updated version of the Electra story, and it is also a statement about the dangers of isolation. Taking place in a gated community that is meant to shut out the evils of the world, we see that those evils continue in our midst, because with the gated community we have done nothing but *pretend* that those evils were not part of us - in other words, we have glossed over some symptoms but not dealt with the causes.Even beyond this, there are many interesting non-literal elements to think about in this movie. For instance, the opening, with the blond girl that we think is Ellie driving around (intercut with scenes of Ellie packing), but is really Lena, must be meant to indicate that Ellie's father likes women with that look. So maybe he had a subconscious reverse-Oedipal complex towards his daughter, too. In general, the father was an unassertive and weak-minded man that one couldn't feel much sympathy for.Anyway, the movie is well-acted and quite absorbing on most levels. The one thing that keeps it from a higher rating is that it simply isn't believable that the 11 or 12-year-old young sister is capable of the brutal murder of her older sister - maybe she had the will to do it, but it's highly doubtful that she had the physical strength. However, because of the symbolism and nice structure to the movie, I can accept the ending - but only just.I'm looking forward to a second viewing, where I may notice more details.My rating: A very solid 7 out of 10.

Schlock has its place, but schlock with highbrow pretensions like this mess of a film is just laughable. It's too overblown and ludicrous to even be truly offensive, nonwithstanding the scenes of the fourteen year old Ellie's post-coital spooning with her daddy. The twist ending will be no surprise to anyone who has ever seen a few episodes of "Law and Order." I'll give it two points for some unintentional humour, as when Ms Stiles hisses at her father about the telltale birthmark on his left "butt cheek" (making him whimper like a spanked puppy), but otherwise this film is nothing more than a waste of two talented young actresses.