Review of Secret Window (2004) by Jens M — 07 Jan 2010

I actually felt like breaking the Secret Window after it was over. I have no doubt that David Koepp has some skills writing and directing. He wrote Panic Room which was very good. I also have no doubt that Johnny Depp is a good actor and he gives his all. But despite a couple scares and a promising beginning, this film is an absolute mess. The performances other than Depp aren't very strong, the plot is quite boring for the most part and the ending will make you want to pull your hair out over its incoherency and stupidity. And what is even worse is that you can predict the stupid ending. Secret Window is a movie that cheats its audience and devolves into nothing more than good aspects gone to a total waste.

This is just a shockingly inept movie that throws logic out the window and replaces it with stuff that makes no sense for the purpose of moving the plot forward. The movie starts with great promise with a really cool camera shot on Depp to begin the movie. After that, the movie goes downhill. I didn't seem to care for Depp's character at all. Granted he had his moments of humour, and he was entertaining at times, but that was Depp's depth not the character's depth. It just felt really empty and the cheap rip off ending didn't help his character either.

We have the villain played very unthreateningly by John Turturro. I wasn't really threatened by him at all, more laughing at his ridiculous accent. And again the ending didn't help for the reason why Mr. Shooter was threatening Depp anyways. He didn't even do anything unexpected or stereotypical for this type of movie. I just picked off everything that was going to happen. In a movie like this unpredictability is key and logic is needed. Amazingly, neither of those are present.

If you couldn't tell already by reading this, I hated the ending and it made the rest of the already bad movie seem even worse. It's like Koepp took the easy way out, tying up all the loose ends by saying "this happened", even though we didn't even see what actually happened. Its very cheap and it takes the easy way out instead of coming up with some plausible ending that is coherent. I just scoffed at this movie, nothing makes sense and you don't care, plain and simple.

I was surprised by how empty this movie is of soul and originality. Johnny Depp gives his all and Koepp is a talented director is this, but Koepp undermines himself with some horrible writing, few scares and no interest what so ever. I like seeing twists at the end of the movie, Memento is a wonderful example of that. This is so far from that. Secret Window is a movie that needed a rewrite, something unexpected and should not have took its audience for granted. Thumbs down. Avoid this movie at all costs.