Close Your Eyes
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Movie Reviews of Close Your Eyes
Movie Review: Another attempt at filming a great novel....
Summary: 2 Stars
Madison Smartt Bell's Doctor Sleep, the novel on which this film is based, is a very well written thriller that delves into the occult to connect a hypnotist with insomnia, a little girl who is mute, and a single female cop in a case involving the murder of young children. Bell, true to his name, really is a smart writer; he knows how to seamlessly fuse the literary with the popular in this great piece of fiction.
There are always problems in translating a well written novel to the screen. The best cinematic adaptations take from their source novels a combination of the characters, plot, and, most importantly, atmosphere and the links that connect all the standard elements, as best they can, ideally converting the tone, the flavor of the novel into a visual counterpart. It is a tough job. One of the great adaptations, in my opinion, is Tom Jones, the 1965 Tony Richardson film, from Henry Fielding's novel--a masterful translation that seamlessly made the transition in a bawdy comic masterpiece of a film.
But here in Close Your Eyes, Nick Willing's film based on the Bell novel, we have a different work altogether. The problem with the film is that the screenwriter and director have focused on the thriller element(s) to such an extent that the intrigue of the novel is only sketchily presented. The links to the occult are there in the film, but they are basically given lip service only, so that although viewers know that there is a connection to Rosicrucian alchemy, they do not know how that is linked so inextricably to the "bad guy" or, for that matter, to the "good guy", the hypnotist.
What the viewer sees is a guy with personal doubts (been there, done that) confronted with a terrible situation (yawn) aided by an outcast cop (cliche) who runs into an evil villain (trite) with an ending straight out of 80s horror movies in which when you think things are all peachy, fine and dandy, and everything's right with the world again, OOPS! here's the tiny little signal that, guess what, the horror LIVES ON!! Ooooooh, scary!!
There are some nice visual sequences here and there and some of the dialogue is smart, somewhat echoing Mr. Bell's fine novel. But for the most part, this is a horror film/thriller that too uncomfortably echoes so many of those that have gone before. By the time the all-too-predictable ending comes along, the smart viewer has given up on trying to find something truly unique and riveting in a horror film for the 21st century. In my opinion, the closest we have so far to this category are Pi, by Darren Aronofsky, and the brilliant Safe, directed by Todd Haynes.
Movie Review: Disappointing Anglo giallo
Summary: 2 Stars
Close Your Eyes aka Doctor Sleep is a rare British stab at a giallo that gets off to a promising start that it never really builds on with an opening hypnotic dream scene that's the kind of thing that Dario Argento should have done in The Stendhal Syndrome (indeed, in his prime Argento could have made this fly). Unfortunately, aside from introducing the two main characters it has little to do with the plot and its visual imagination is never repeated. Still, there's plenty of promise in the premise as Goran Visnjic's hypnotist with a past and psychic abilities is blackmailed by Shirley Henderson's cop into trying to get the only surviving victim of a child killer to talk. Unfortunately it's one of those films that gradually gets less interesting and more predictable as it goes along - if you can't see the heavily telegraphed twist-in-a-tail coda coming a mile off, do let us know how much you enjoy it when you get round to seeing your second movie. Opening aside, it also lacks the flourish it needs to stand out. Even one character meeting a nasty end involving a few incisions in his chest and a live rat is rendered almost sedate.
The three leads never really convince. Visnjic certainly tries his best but his range is rather too limited to make more than a stock stereotype out of his role. A badly miscast Shirley Henderson may have dropped the irritating girlie voice but still makes about as credible a cop as Mike Mazurki would a prima ballerina while even Paddy Considine can't get a real grip on his anorakish internet supernatural expert. Ironically the best performance comes from Miranda Otto in a fairly disposable role as Visnjic's wife, the one character who really convinces despite being firmly relegated to the sidelines. A step down from director Nick Willing's promising but not quite successful Photographing Fairies, it's easy to see why after much initial hype during production this stayed on the shelf so long.
Movie Review: Only for those with good ears...
Summary: 2 Stars
"Close Your Eyes" is a fine suspense story with hints of the supernatural and more than ample gore. I'd probably rate it a 3 or 4 star DVD but it was, strangely, lacking captions for the hearing-impaired (which includes those of us who have difficulty comprehending some severe British accents). Amazon's listing shows "closed captions" but the only captions are in Spanish.Movie Review: Don't Close Your Eyes Or You'll Fall Asleep
Summary: 1 Stars
Somebody just woke me up to give this review. I fell asleep watching this movie because it was so boring, but I did rewind to finish it so I could give a fair review. It's a story about a hypnotist who is helping the cops track down a serial killer. He can see what others see. Sounds great right? Trust me, it's not great at all. I am glad to give this movie it's first 1 star review. If it was up to me I would give it 0 stars. The acting was horrible. The story was silly. It wasn't scary or suspenseful. The ending was so bad that it made me chuckle. Not to mention that the final twist was very predictable. I would have expected something much better from BBC than this failure at a horror movie. Don't waste your time seeing this film. In fact, don't waste your time reading any more of my words about how bad it is. Keep moving along... nothing to see here. I think the writer and director had their eyes closed when they created this garbage.Movie Review: Close your eyes
Summary: 1 Stars
I was very dissappointed that when I tried to view the DVD I could not, as it could only be viewed in Region 2, and I live in Ireland not America. This was clear on my order as my address is in Ireland. I would like a replacement DVD or my money refunded