The Scribbler

This movie definitely has some stuff going for it, but for my tastes it's a little too strange. I'm a guy that doesn't like strangeness in his movies, that much, but if you're the type that does, maybe you'll enjoy it more than I did.

There are some cool characters. The acting is alright. There's a lot of "crazyness". There are some action sequences, unfortunately they aren't as cool as they should have been. The effects are OK. We're not talking sky high budgets here, but it looks alright.

All in all it was just a little too tiring for me. Based on a graphic novel, maybe it also works best as just that.

Another picture that had way more potential than its final product. When a young woman with dissociative identity disorder is brought to some kind of madhouse, people start killing themselves for no apparent reason. With a bunch of eccentric characters and a visual style that provokes Sin City comparisons, this comic book adaptation will certainly entertain people and capture their attention till the last minute. Unfortunately it all feels a bit rushed, bloated and shallow. With b-listers like Garret Dillahunt, Gina Gershon, Kunal Nayyar, Billy Campbell and Richard Riehle, this movie has some fun acting and prevents from feeling amateuristic, but in the end it's just too much a "been there, seen that" movie...

I've read the Graphic Novel and watched this movie and both are poorly done despite having great potential. The movie suffers mainly from sparse, unnatural dialog that is also excruciatingly uninteresting plus an almost total lack of a thematic audio track; worse still, much of the dialog is annoyingly echoey. As far as the acting goes, the main character never makes herself believable as a crazy person; Eliza Dushku, as much as I loved her as Faith in Buffy, was totally miscast as a no-nonsense medical professional in this movie; Gina Gershon was entirely underutilized. Overall, I'd like to see this movie picked up by a better production team and made into the great movie it could be. Its main strength was its presentation of the disassociative personality disorder of the main character and her descent into madness and insanity. As it stands right now, I'd recommend the Graphic Novel over the movie mainly because it will take a lot less of your time.

The movie starts out mysterious, trying to be a thriller. You'll see the main character (perfectly played by Arrow's Katie Cassidy), being a suspect in a murder case, who is also a mental patient. As a mental patient she lives in a building full of other mental patients who are too crazy to be credible, just as her head is inhabited by various personalities.

Obviously the movie wants you to wonder what kind of reality (or realities) you're in. While making you think, the movie transforms from a mysterious thriller into something more sci-fi / fantasy. This could be a good thing if it wasn't already well done by The Matrix, or Identity. As the movie transforms from mysterious to crazy and loses all credibility (yes, superpowers), somehow the lead characters succeed in becoming very interesting. Maybe the lead character isn't as crazy as we were meant to believe and her acting skills (together with her co-stars) make this movie watchable and fun, while all the puzzle pieces fall in their place.

My advice: don't watch this movie expecting something very complex, but it's good enough thanks to the actors who take their job seriously. The nod goes to Katie Cassidy. After disliking her in Arrow, she made me a believer. Thanks to her the movie is now a 6 instead of a 5.

Here is yet another film I went into mostly blind and...it was OK. There were some plot elements that recalled SUCKER PUNCH and MEMENTO, but for the most part it was its own thing and very distinguishable from those. The plot is about Suki, a mental patient with dis-associative identity disorder who is undergoing treatment with a machine that is supposed to "burn" away those extra, unwanted personalities. There have also been a recent rash of deaths of which she is the prime suspect. The best thing I can say about this movie is that it has a very cool visual style and some decent effects and action despite the low budget. Sure, the rain-soaked, color-corrected, graphic novel-esque look has been done to death in the years since SIN CITY came out, but this one felt original enough that it was interesting to watch in that regard. However, I thought that the story brought nothing new to the table, and was equal parts silly and stupid. And, despite a "who's who" of character actors filling out the cast none of the performances were that memorable, let alone great. Katie Cassidy does fine in the lead role as Suki, but she never shows much range. All of the other characters border on caricature and are only there as the plot requires them to be. Also, the plot was very thin and only really does something with it in the last act with a twist that can be seen from a mile away. So, if you like comic books and/or graphic novels and you're looking for something different, by all means check this out. However, if you require a little more from your movie than cool visuals and the barest minimum of a plot then maybe you should skip this one.