Détour mortel

This has the creepy overtones of a Stephen King story and the movie does a very good job of delivering on the story.

On the surface we see a successful author of lightweight mysteries, visiting her fans, and enjoying their adulation.

Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, she has a childhood trauma that has given her some unique coping abilities that she has used to be successful.

When trauma hits once again, she copes because she has a genius ability to compartmentalize everything.

At times, I wondered if this was going to be a rehash of Misery or perhaps another take on The Burning Bed.

The movie successfully mixes the seriousness of a near death with lighthearted satire.

Watched the movie despite the reviews because of Steven King's writing it. Couldn't believe I'd seen the same move - it was a good exercise in psychology. To briefly over the story, a successful author is raped. She avoids telling anyone because she fears retribution, both professional and personal. She soon start hunting her assailant. Some of her behavior isn't helpful or rational. Many times you catch the 'heroine' hallucinating, so was she making it all up? Is she the real killer? The tension was well-done. The plot twists were credible and added to the suspense. So what were the detractors watching?? OK, it wasn't a big-budget movie, but it was certainly entertaining.

First let me say that the books from Stephen King are always better then the movies they made from it. The movies from his books that were well made are The Shining, Carrie, Stand By me, The green Mile and maybe a couple more. But most of the time the movies don't even come close to the actual quality or suspense of the novel. Anyways, for this movie I didn't read the book so it is difficult to compare them. The movie was okay, a typical revenge movie with typical Stephen King characters. Maria Bello gave an okay performance playing the leading role of the raped woman. The music and sound effects were a bit mediocre. It will not be remembered as the other good adaptations of his books but it's an all right movie for TV. Overall I would give it a 6,5 rating.

This is written after my second viewing, not having remembered the first viewing when I first got a copy of it, judge that how you like.

Unabashed fan of anything Stephen King and almost anything that Maria Bello is in, this is a good watch. It starts off at a pedestrian enough pace, has a shocking bit that he viewer has to digest then powers on and builds to the climax like almost all Stephen Kings writing does with twists along the way.

Some of the story is a little predictable, but the acting by all concerned is well above average which made the movie quite believable. No silly mistakes and drawn out sequences where the villain gains a temporary upper hand like most revenge movies was a nice change.

Overall an enjoyable movie, but not for the faint hearted.

It's not great but it's not bad. I rarely feel this ambiguous about a movie to be honest. It seems to be a revenge thriller with an odd light- hearted "Murder She Wrote" sensibility, which honestly makes no sense but results in something quite bemusing & unexpected. I really don't know what I think about this flick but I sort of enjoyed it. Some of the reviewers here giving it negative reviews are so incorrect in their comments I actually wonder if they even watched the movie. Certainly it's doubtful if they DID watch it that they actually paid it much attention. For example, there was no "dead relative" talking to her, that was clearly one of her novel's characters and the other women were part of the "knitting circle" from her books. The point was that she was having trouble separating reality from fantasy, but many have missed that point. There is a lot more to this story than some seem to think so if you are the kind of person who needs everything spelled out to you carefully and/or have the attention span of a flea then you won't like this flick. Others might like it tho. Worth giving a shot but don't expect too much. It just could have been done a whole lot better.