Review of Alexandra's Project (2003) by Brian C — 14 Mar 2010

So depressing. And powerful, sickening, and twisted. Alexandra's Project is a man's worst nightmare. Steve wakes up, goes to work, and lives his day. It is his birthday, and he gets a promotion. Comes home to an empty house, with nothing but a television set and a video player, and instructions to play the video.

What Steve sees, and ultimately the audience painfully endures, is the total humiliation of himself, at the hands of his wife, to 'stars' in the video he is playing.

I won't go into the details of all that Steve suffers through, but it is powerful and gut-wrenching.

Helen Buday as Alexandra is amazing. This movie would not have worked at all if not for this actress' impressive acting skill. She made Alexandra deplorable, and yet sympathetic. As she performs one act of vengeance after another, you feel sorry for her, in what drove her to this madness. And Gary Sweet as Steve was nothing short of amazing as well. He plays the successful and confident office guy and confident loving father and husband, and gradually gets every bit of humanity stripped from him. And what is left is a broken husk of a man. Emotionallly destroyed.

I can't begin to go through all of the emotions that Alexandra takes Steve (and us, the audience) through. It is just too much. But that just goes to show that acting, direction and script writing were so on target, leaving us feeling drained.

Personally, I would have made the ending slightly different. Steve was locked in the house with no means of communication; he found one bullet in his cell phone case; and his briefcase was moved. I would have had him finding that his briefcase was opened and in it was the gun that Alexandra showed in the beginning of the video. Then him realizing that he cannot ever escape and the only thing that truly mattered to him was taken away, him giving up and shooting himself. The film fades to black and cuts to credits as you hear the gunshot and see blodd splash on the tv where you see the family saying cheers paused. But that is just me.

Still an excellent movie, and worthy of any praise it gets.