Inconceivable
(2017)
Inconceivable Blu-ray despite stunning video and great audio falls short as an overall disappointing Blu-ray release
A mysterious young woman, Katie, and her daughter move to a new town to escape her past and quickly befriends Angela Morgan, a mother of one who longs for a bigger family. As their lives become intricately entwined, Angela and her husband, Brian, invite Katie to live in their guest-house to serve as their nanny. Over time, the blossoming friendship between the two women spirals into a dangerous obsession as Katie becomes overly attached to the Morgans’ daughter. Enduring lies and manipulations, Angela and Brian realize that sweet Katie is actually trying to destroy their family from within.
For more about
Inconceivable and the Inconceivable Blu-ray release, see
Inconceivable Blu-ray Review published by Jeffrey Kauffman on August 25, 2017 where this Blu-ray release scored
1.5 out of
5.
Director:
Jonathan Baker
Writer:
Chloe King
Starring:
Gina Gershon, Faye Dunaway, Nicolas Cage, Nicky Whelan, Natalie Eva Marie, Jonathan Baker
Producer:
Randall Emmett
»
See full cast & crew
Inconceivable Blu-ray Review
. . .how this thing got made?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, August 25, 2017
There are any number of (hopefully) unintentionally comic aspects to
Inconceivable, but among the funniest is that, according to some online
reports, Lindsay Lohan was initially attached to project as both producer and star in some errant comeback bid. This mess of a thriller borrows
significant plot points from older and at least relatively iconic films like
The Hand That Rocks the Cradle but never works up anything approaching even the modest levels of suspense that the
Rebecca de Mornay outing did. The film's title is a supposedly clever play on the idea that Angela (Gina Gershon), the focal female of the story, is
unable to have babies naturally and so resorted to an egg donor to produce her adorable daughter Cora. The film has already detailed the trials of a
woman named Katie (Nicky Whelan, in the part originally claimed for Lohan) who has her own adorable daughter named Maddie. When a mutual
friend named Linda (Natalie Eva Marie) introduces Katie to Angela, Angela invites Katie into the decidedly upper crust enclave where she lives with
her doctor husband Brian (Nicolas Cage). To say that events that unfold thereafter strain credulity might be termed the understatement of the year,
but suffice it to say Katie is not exactly whom she claims to be, and that there are indeed completely absurd connections between Katie, Gina and
their daughters which push suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.
Inconceivable might have been more accurately branded under a
title more like
Unbelievable.
The film begins with a brief prelude which seems to suggest the woman we'll later come to know as Katie has been in an abusive relationship, one
she
"handles" with aplomb (and a nearby kitchen knife). The film quickly segues to detail the ludicrously perfect life of doctors Brian and Angela,
happily
married and doting parents to Cora. It's all presented as a picture perfect suburban paradise, where everyone's rich, entitled and beautiful (maybe
excepting Nicolas Cage, but I digress). Already the film is on such patently ridiculous ground that the incredible series of coincidences and plot
mechanics that follow simply add to an already well established feeling of unbelievability.
But of course it
isn't paradise, as
Inconceivable starts to chart the woes of Angela in trying to have another child, something that
Brian especially seems to want as well. The intersection of this need with Katie's sudden entrance on the scene is so ridiculously pat, and Katie is
such an odd, discomfiting individual from the get go, that the film never really develops suspense, merely trotting out plot points (including
interstitial
flashbacks meant to get everyone up to speed on just
what a nut Katie actually is) and opting for occasional moments of angst.
In a way,
Inconceivable reminded of me a much less artful take on some of the character traits and even plot points seen recently in the
hugely entertaining HBO limited series
Big Little Lies. An
aggregation of too beautiful to be real women, all in their designer yoga pants, deal with their various issues, with at least one of them dealing
with a history of abuse in both of these properties, but
Inconceivable isn't really interested in exploring the characters it offers, and
instead is content to exploit hoary genre tropes at virtually every turn.
There is one other way in which
Inconceivable and
Big Little Lies intersect, and that's with regard to a plot point that hinges on a
pretty incredible coincidence that links various characters together.
Big Little Lies manages to ameliorate the too convenient feel of its
particular coincidence through structural artifices that make it seem less unlikely, but
Inconceivable's entire plot wouldn't make sense
without the central "surprise" (that any mystery and/or thriller fan is going to see coming from a mile off) that informs the whole reason behind
Katie's appearance. The film's inability to really exploit even this unbelievable angle is perhaps one of the best clues as to the haphazard and
generally nonsensical presentational aspects of much of this film.
Inconceivable Blu-ray, Video Quality
Inconceivable is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.38:1. Cinematographer Brandon
Cox manages to finally mention shooting with the Arri Alexa in the final nanosecond of his interview included on this Blu-ray as a supplement (an
interview which is otherwise appropriately concerned with such things as how hot Gina Gershon is). This has the typically sharp, smooth and well
detailed look of this technology, and perhaps due to a prevalence of really brightly lit and/or sunny environments, fine detail is really quite excellent
across the board. The film is relatively free of any overt grading, and as such the palette looks natural and nicely suffused. There are a couple of
effects dealing with Katie's (real or assumed) eye color which are kind of haunting and which give the film sudden, really vivid, pops of color. Several
extreme close-ups offer really abundant fine detail in things like facial pores. A tendency to shoot into light or other regimens that cast effulgent glows
on characters can lead to a slightly gauzy look at times, and there are a couple of nighttime or dimly lit sequences that suffer from a relative lack of
shadow detail, but otherwise this is a precise and appealing looking transfer that has no compression issues to confront.