At the Movies

Craven, Wes, dir. Red Eye.

I saw this film nearly a week ago and I've been meaning to post about it, but last week I saw 4 plays, 1 movie, and read 3 books, so I'm a little behind. Anyway, I thought it was a fabulous film and I had a lot of fun. I saw it at the Arclight at midnight, which is about the right time to see a scary movie. To my relief, it wasn't that scary, but it was fascinating. Interestingly enough, the author of one of the books I read last week saw the same film.

I liked the Scream movies even though I'm not much of a fan of the slasher flick because they were clever and funny as well as thrilling. They had just the right amount of terror that I could handle them and still enjoy the plot and appreciate Craven's brilliance. This film was very similar in many ways.

First of all, the casting was genius. Cillian Murphy was funny and clever and charming and creepy. Rachel McAdams made a fabulous female action hero. Watching them both throughout the whole movie was a pleasure, which is good, because although the supporting cast was great, in many ways the film was all them.

One of the ways the film was fascinating was its many transformations and reversals. Of course, anyone who saw any of the previews would know that Murphy was going to turn out to be the bad guy, but even so he seemed so sweet and had such beautiful eyes that when they met and flirted, I kind of went "Awwww" anyway. I think the film might have been even better if there were a way not to advertise that he was evil; that would have been a great suprise. But when they got off the plane, the reversal was even better because the film changed from a tense but static thriller to a scary guy with a knife Scream-type slasher flick, which was great. And then Rachel McAdams ended up doing most of the chasing and being quite a star. There was a real sense of gender reversal with Murphy being effeminized (and penetrated-he got stabbed) and McAdams being tough and capable and weilding knife and club. My favorite moment in the entire movie was immediately after Murphy was stabbed, at which time he tied a jaunty scarf around his wound so he could continue the chase. It was a beautiful, brilliant, hilarious moment. I really enjoyed the movie, though I'm not generally a fan of the scary thriller genre. This was well-done and intelligent, and thus fascinating.