THE AISLE SEAT - by Mike McGranaghan

"SECRET WINDOW"

Great Movies Based on Stephen King Stories - Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption

Good Movies Based on Stephen King Stories - The Dead Zone, Carrie, Misery, Hearts in Atlantis, The Green Mile, Dolores Claiborne

Bad Movies Based on Stephen King Stories - Dreamcatcher, The Mangler, The Night Flyer, Thinner, Needful Things, Sleepwalkers, The Lawnmower Man, Graveyard Shift, Pet Sematary, Maximum Overdrive, Cat’s Eye

This is obviously not a complete list; in part, I’ve left off movies like The Shining that divided viewers so strongly. Still, I bet you can see a pattern here. It’s no secret that King’s unique style of storytelling rarely translates well to the big screen. I’ve always felt that this was because filmmakers don’t necessarily understand the author’s appeal. It’s not the horrific premises, or the scary moments, or the shock value. No, what makes King so popular is the vibe he brings to a tale. No one tells a story quite the way he does. There’s a very specific combination of plotting and attitude that makes his work stand apart, just as it draws a reader in. I’ve read many of King’s works over the years and that’s always what appeals to me more than anything else.

When I first saw the preview for Secret Window, I didn’t even recognize it as being a Stephen King story (it is one of four novellas in the book “Four Past Midnight”). Then again, the preview was somewhat misleading; I thought it was a horror movie. In actuality, this is a very subtle type of suspense film that has been adapted by writer/director David Koepp (who also wrote Panic Room).

Johnny Depp plays writer Mort Rainey. Ever since finding his wife Amy (Maria Bello) in a motel bed with another man six months prior, Mort’s life has gone into a tailspin. He holes himself up in a little cabin out in the woods. Most of his day is spent napping or finding other excuses to avoid the fact that he’s got writer’s block. One afternoon, a strange man knocks on the door. The guy, John Shooter (John Turturro), claims that Mort plagiarized one of his stories. Mort doesn’t believe it until he reads Shooter’s writing. It rings a bell. He digs up a short story he had published in a book years ago. What he finds is nearly identical to Shooter’s tale. As the film goes on, we learn that it’s possible Mort may have somewhat of a checkered past when it comes to copying the work of others.

I’m leaving out some very specific plot points and will continue to do so. What you need to know is that Shooter threatens Mort over the issue, and before long people start turning up dead. The questions are: Who exactly is this Shooter guy? Did Mort really steal his story? Or was he hired by Amy’s boyfriend Ted (Timothy Hutton) to harass Mort into signing the divorce papers?

I’ll admit right now that the plot twist in Secret Window took me by surprise. I’m not sure why I didn’t see it coming; a similar plot twist has been used by at least two other recent movies I can think of. Even so, I was caught off guard. It’s kind of nice to have one of these work for a change, because they so rarely do. A lot of movies use “surprise” developments simply to twist themselves into a pretzel. Consequently those movies don’t make a lot of sense. They seem dishonest. Secret Window, in contrast, uses its surprise not to pull the rug out from under you but to further develop its real theme. This is not a story about murders or terror; it’s about a guy struggling to put his life back together after his wife’s betrayal. I admire the fact that the film didn’t cop out. It’s about something more than just hitting pre-established “scare beats.”

That goes for the ending too. I’d never dream of spoiling it, but I will say that the ending is not cheap. One of the things Shooter keeps saying about his own story is that “the ending is the most important part.” That’s true of the film as a whole. After gaining our interest, it would have been simple for the ending to cop out, but it doesn’t. The very last shot, in particular, is a wonderfully demented little coda that hits just the right note.

Johnny Depp is extremely well cast in the role of Mort Rainey. What’s great about Depp is that he’s always interesting. The choices he makes on how to play a character are unique, and they keep you watching. In this case, he gives Mort an underlying hostility toward his wife and her lover than manifests itself in a somewhat morbid sense of humor. The actor also adopts a physical appearance (including body language) that suggests, but doesn’t beat you over the head with, an inner desperation the character doesn’t want to deal with. There’s probably no movie that wouldn’t be improved by Depp’s participation.

As a whole, Secret Window fits into the realm of “good” movies based on Stephen King books. It’s more ambitious than the majority of movies in its genre, yet it’s not anything that will likely rock your world. The best King movies linger on in the mind. You remember the characters, the scenarios, and the emotions long after the picture is over. I’m sure you can remember the youthful bonding experiences of the boys in Stand By Me. Or the emerging friendship between convicts Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption. There’s nothing in Secret Window that hits home to that degree. However, the film is absorbing and satisfying, just like a good old-fashioned page-turner of a novel.

( out of four)


Secret Window is rated PG-13 for violence/terror, sexual content, and language. The running time is 1 hour and 37 minutes.

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