Review of Secret Window (2004) by Irene S — 27 Apr 2014

Adapted from Stephen King's novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, which originally appeared in his 1990 horror anthology Four Past Midnight, and written and directed for the screen by David Koepp (Stir of Echoes (1999) and Ghost Town (2008)), this should have been a tense psychological horror with good scares, but something got lost along the way, and it's far too serious when everyone should have had fun with it.

Writer Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp) had a breakdown when he discovered his wife Amy (Maria Bello) in bed with friend Ted (Timothy Hutton). He vanishes to a remote cabin in upstate New York to complete his new book, and get away from signing the divorce papers, only thing is Mort is suffering from a horrible case of writer's block, and then he's confronted by John Shooter (John Turturro) a dairy farmer from Mississippi, who claims Mort's story Secret Window was copied from Shooter's own story 'Sowing Season'.

Mort isn't convinced, even claims he published his story before Shooter published his, however Shooter isn't finished with Mort, and he makes his attacks personal. This would have been perfect material in the hands of Dario Argento circa 1981, but something got lost in translation here, and despite the best efforts of Koepp, it just comes across as flat and uninspired, it's all been done elsewhere before, and better too.

Plus, when everyone else in the film is better than Depp, then something's wrong.