Comments: Inspired casting and the subsequent performances make this mean-spirited thriller fun. Bill Pullman is right at home in this Lynch family film. It's not real tight script-wise, the twisted ending broadcasts itself early, but no matter. French Stewart as a goatee'd bad cop is creepy fun. All the performances are intriguing.
Summary: Director Jennifer Lynch (Boxing Helena, 1993), daughter of notorious iconoclastic filmmaker David Lynch, delivers this perfect, gruesome psychological thriller. FBI agents Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) and Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) arrive in a desolate town where a string of grisly serial killings have been taking place; they must unravel the story from the three survivors of the last slaughter. A strangely serene eight-year-old girl, a strung-out junkie and a corrupt cop all tell their versions of the macabre events in an unfolding series of Rashomon-style flashbacks filled with lies and deception. But as the pieces begin to fit together, it becomes clear that the truth is far more terrifying. Led with a creepy brilliance by Pullman and Ormond, the characters radiate unease amid the methodical madness of fetishistic murder and mental torture.
2008
USA, Germany, Canada
Surveillance
