Review of One Hour Photo (2002) by Billy S — 27 Apr 2016

One Hour Photo is the directorial and writer debut of Mark Romanek, and it stars Robin Williams in a thriller film about a lonely guy who is a photo technician and is nice to the customers. There's always that one family that come to him for photos, and he's happy to see them, that is until we see that he might be a little obsessed with them.

When my sister and I saw it for the first time a few years ago, we actually loved it and were really creeped out about the film. So when I got free HBO for the weekend on DirecTV and saw that One Hour Photo was on it, I figured why not, and watch it again, which still holds up as my first opinion, while adding in more layers that I find unexpected.

This is mostly a one man show kind of ordeal that whether or not the film will be a success depending on the main character's performance, and luckily the late Robin Williams did an outstanding job of playing a lonely guy that gets obsessive.

The supporting cast are also really good, and the main character's development is so effectively creepy, but also kind of sad that I actually felt sorry for him. The direction and writing by Mark Romanek is well done that that directing music videos really paid off for him, like the hallway scene for example that felt unsettling as it's just pointing the camera at Robin Williams being creepy, and it kept lingering on him for quite a while, especially with a very creepy score by Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek.

There were some parts that I had no idea where it was going, and there were some scenes that were rightfully up for interpretation. One Hour Photo is a fantastic thriller that is very underrated in my opinion and needs to be seen more.