User reviews

I saw this in the cinema solely because I had nothing else to do and that Ewan McGregor was in it. I had no idea what it was about. I am so glad that I watched it, because this film left me thinking for ages.

This is a thriller about a psychiatrist (which I happen to be one) trying to help a depressed & suicidal patient. The film twists unexpectedly all the time without getting bizarre. The visual effects are stunning, and the soundtrack created the eerie atmosphere which gave me creeps. The best thing about this film is that the film keeps you in suspense throughout the film, without the use of sudden loud noises, gore or scary scenes. Everything in the film seemed so every day life (to me anyway) and yet it keeps you on the edge all the time. The interspersed scenes of unrelated objects creates suspense in a way that is surreal. In the ending, I was totally surprised at that happened. I had to really think a lot to figure out what happened. Usually, when I don't understand a film, I say it is bad bad bad, but for this film, it leaves me wanting to find out more about it.

I strongly recommend anyone to watch this film!

While the direction is flawless, the art direction unparalleled, and despite Ewan McGregor providing another breathtaking and engrossing animation of character, the film is, unfortunately, fundamentally flawed. It's story is lazy.

Images will stay in your mind for months afterward. The wall of books, Sam's too short pant legs, the staircase that seems to have been built on its side, the film is nothing short of a breakthrough visually. It never really cuts, it's absolutely seamless from scene to scene. The special effects are truly special. The movie is absolute eye candy, and shot totally unconventionally, breaking the 180 degree rule almost constantly to brilliant affect.

First, how the story works. The way the narrative unfolds, the story itself becomes a kind of character, and a very good one at that. Sam is a wealthy psychiatrist, seemingly beginning to break down, prone to bending the rules of the trade, while Henry, a patient, is undeniably a mess mentally. As a result, we see the events through the eyes of, well we're not sure. Probably one of these two characters. This is the gimmick-going-for-genius-but-fails of the film, the audience is only ever as sure of anything as either of the main characters seem to be. We plunge with them down to the depths of their ever increasing madness. We accompany them on their journey, trying to make sense of an utterly senseless world.

Now, how it doesn't work. The twist is just not tight enough. If you're going to write a story where ultimately nothing happens, then the twist better be brilliant, I mean perfect. Here it is not. While it is interesting and complicated and even good, it pales in comparison to the other components of the film. It fails at any psychological or philosophical profundity, and fails as a rewarding narrative. The story alone, I'd only give 3 stars. So, while I'm unsure just how this movie ever got made based on its story, I am glad that it was. A true treat for the eyes and the imagination.

Have you heard of Stay? If you're here you must have but I'll bet it wasn't too long ago that you found out about it. It's a movie that came out late last year with little fanfare, was dismissed as a poor movie by critics and quickly ushered back out of theaters.

It's a crying shame.

It was a wonderful movie. My favorite type of movies are psychological horror movies. Favorites include: Jacob's Ladder, Mulholland Dr., Donnie Darko, and in a similar realm, Momento and Fight Club. I love seeing a good representation of the human mind on film and that is exactly what this film shows so well.

It's about a college student (Ryan Gosling) who tells his shrink (Ewan McGregor) that he is going to kill himself on the stroke of midnight this Saturday, leaving his shrink to enlist the help of his formerly suicidal girlfriend (Naomi Watts) to figure out why he wants to kill himself and how to stop him, while his world falls apart.

It's directed by Marc Forster of Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland fame. The movie has been called pretentious, shallow, ridiculous, bewildering, absurd, and empty by many reviewers. Personally I think that they didn't have the patience for it and/or were put off by its extravagant visuals and cuts. I thought it was great and deserves much more credit than it has received.

The movie's visual style is very interesting and jarring in a good way. It had me constantly saying to my girlfriend "did you see that?" Full of slight of the hand camera/editing tricks. Nearly everything in the movie is symbolic of other things or ideas in the movie. The acting is very good, especially among the lesser characters. Everything in the movie feels so unreal, but that is serves some purpose even if one couldn't know what it is right away. A second viewing would reveal many new things. In the end much of the movie is left up to interpretation and my girlfriend and I had a good conversation about our ideas on what things meant in the movie. After thinking about it for a day I'm pretty sure that I could explain everything in the movie, even what the hell is up with Ewan McGregor's pants, Why Gosling wanted to commit suicide and the twins and triplets.

It was fun was figuring out what the rest of the movie meant after seeing its end, the solution. The movie is like a code and the end is the decryption key. It differs from other "sixth sense" type surprise ending movies because everything you would see in the movie before the end would not act as a clue to what it all means or what the ending is. It's more like decrypting a diary than a problem with a solution to it.

Basically, any movie buff owes it to themselves to see this movie. I rented it but after seeing it I fully intend to purchase the DVD.

Ultimately it's a richly textured, multi-faceted look at the relationship between guilt and love, death and life. Suicidal themes run amuck, so, as you can imagine, there are many dark, intense scenes between talented actors. And the performances really are great, as is the mind-bending cinematography. But its way overwritten...the truly brilliant "interesting plot device" mingles but never bonds with the characters or dialogue, so everything falls flat. It's not rewarding, because insignificant elements overshadow details crucial to experiencing the intended impact of the film.

If you want to see an astonishingly filmed, well acted movie, here it is, have fun...But Stay breaks the first commandment of film-making because it takes itself more seriously than its subject. At the end of the day, the message the filmmakers seem to communicate is, "see what we did!" instead of "see what we mean."

Ok, what is totally absurd for 90 minutes becomes clear in the end. It's a coherent story, if nothing else. The problem with Stay is that it's just a huge trick that's revealed in the end. I mean, the whole movie is quite unnecessary, and there's no real plot. It's just a story devised to keep you guessing what's happening, and then when you get it, you say "Oh, fine, thanks". There's no real motive underneath, existential, moral, psychological or whatever, a reason-to-be such the one that inspired "Enemy" by Villeneuve, for example. Would I recommend Stay? No.

The film was trashed by most, but not all critics, and lost like 40 million dollars.

I found it engrossing, beautifully acted, and directed with imagination, nuance and touching sensitivity.

I want very much to encourage people to watch it, so I will avoid spoilers which is not easy to do in discussing this film.

Although it is rightly classified as a drama, it is in many ways a mystery, and like the best mysteries, the clues are all there, but the story itself becomes so compelling that the viewer is too involved in what is happening on the screen to put the clues together and solve the mystery.

Please watch it and decide for yourself. It really deserves serious attention. After you have watched it and thought about it for a while, go to YouTube and watch one of several analyses of the film which may help you appreciate how skillful a film this really is.

This movie had a lot of potential but I wish I DIDNT STAY. My sister had the right idea in mind and walked out 30 minutes in. I lost all my credibility in movie picking for this one. Not worth the demotion. I gave it a 6 because after I Wikipedia'd it, I understood it better and also because I love Ryan Gosling.

I too was part of a test audience for this film. I do agree with the last comment about the plot. The script was a little predictable and the one liners seemed a little corny at times.

The acting however, I thought was great. Ewan McGregor put in a marvelous performance, demonstrating that he is talented and can easily play a wide variety of roles. Naomi Watts, I think also put in a great performance.

Of course, I haven't as yet seen the fully edited theatre version, but so far I think it's a film that should definitely be seen.

A good film in all. 4/5

***SPOILERS*** Surviving a fiery car crash on the Brooklyn Bridge young 20 year-old art student Henry Letham, Ryan Gosling, goes to psychiatrist Sam Foster's, Ewan McGregor, office seeking help for the strange and weird experiences he's been going through since that accident.Not wanting to live anymore and face the thought that he was responsible for his parents death Henry tells Dr. Sam Foster that the following Saturday, his 21t birthday, at midnight he's going to kill himself. Sam had been through this before when his girlfriend Lila, Naomi Watts,tried to kill herself by slashing her wrists whom he saved in just the nick of time.

With Sam trying to get Henry committed over the weekend to keep him from killing himself he begins to suffer strange hallucinations as if he's being controlled by Henry and wonders if he, not Henry, is the one who needs psychiatric help. Things seem to be out of kilter for Sam as he starts to see people who are supposed to have recently died like, who Henry recognized, his dead father Leon, Bo Hoskins, and later Henry's dead mother, Kate Burton, and even his pet dog Olive.

It turns out that Sam and Henry are one and the same person with Lila unknowingly referring to him as Henry and the supposedly deceased Mrs. Lethman as her son Henry Lathman! Sam now trying to save himself as well as Henry backtracks in order to find all the people who knew and were involved with Henry as he starts to get the eerie feeling that he's somehow spiritual connected with his patient and that Henry's impending demise will also be his own.

The movie "Stay" has Sam going through a number of Daja-Vu and astral, as well as real world experiences.As he tries to prevent Henry from taking his life and at the same time finding out the dark secret in Henry's past that's driving him to do just that. You know almost right from the start that the Brooklyn Bridge is the center of gravity in both Henry's and Sam's mindless and almost irresistible rush to self-destruction. We see in a number of flash backs Henry with his girlfriend Athena, Elizabeth Reasen, and parents in a car driving through Brooklyn Heights to make their way, and fatal turn, on the world famous bridge; the best example of art in the 19th century as Henry put it.

A bit, if not very, confusing movie about life and death and how the world of the living and that of the dead sometimes interact with each other and even crosses over to give us a glimpse of what really is the difference, if there is one, between fantasy and reality when the physical and ethereal worlds suddenly collied with surprising and devastating results.

I continuously fell asleep while watching this movie. The actors performances are superb (on the other hand Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor are a guarantee of success) but the viewer is supposed all the time to figure out what's happening. It's an experimental film putting the audience to the test all the time, a puzzle much more then a thriller motion picture. The plot (a shrink trying to prevent his patient from committing suicide) is not standard but not even unconventional, the setting, as well as the special effects, make the situations cryptic and weird. The problem is that many times things need to be deciphered.

This is really a spectacular film. I know I'm going to have to see it at least once more, because there's so much stuff going on that it's impossible to give Stay the attention in deserves in one viewing.

First and foremost, although I won't give away the plot here, I'll say that the movie (thankfully) does not rely on a surprise ending for the totality of its impact. In fact, if you're paying attention, you can pretty much figure out (mostly) what the situation is before you get too far into the movie. Unlike some of the worst examples of this genre (i.e. The Sixth Sense), Stay is not a film that "hides the ball," but instead presents you with characters and a storyline, and asks you to draw your own conclusions.

That said, there isn't an obvious solution to the movie. While you may be able to explain the film after viewing it (which is trickier that it will seem at first), you may realize that the real brilliance of this film is in the levels of its narrative. At its core, it is a basic psychological thriller. Simultaneously, and perhaps subconsciously, it also meditates on weighty issues of reality and identity- consider what the imperative "Stay" means to different characters at different points in the film, and it's almost like you're watching an entirely different movie than you originally thought.

Finally, the visuals in this movie provide their own context and narrative regarding the fragile nature of human memory and perception. This is the best looking movie I've seen in a long time, and the fact that it's combined with such a great story and cast makes this a rare treat.

If there is a weak link here, it's probably Gosling, who I think missed some opportunities to really dig in with his character and creep us out. Still his acting is better than that of most of Hollywood's garbage these days.

Final verdict: if you want a smart and unsettling film that will spur a serious discussion, watch this. You won't be disappointed.

It would be cruel to reveal anything about the story before seeing this film because most of the enjoyment is learning which path the story will choose.

The film has masterful visual style. At times it appears to be a normal picture until the surreal aspects make themselves known with subtlety. The editing is seamless, almost but not quite confusing, and the callbacks to earlier scenes are never overused.

It is not a spoiler to state that early on Something Isn't Quite Right, and there are story elements that the avid moviegoer will know to be central to the conclusion. However, it's the path that leads to the end that makes the time enjoyable.

Naomi Watts, as usual, is perfect, and Ewan McGregor has again picked one of the scripts that was for the art and not the money. Ryan Gosling is effective, and Jeanine Garafolo's three minutes were eerie. I'm certain that Elizabeth Reaser will be seen again.

Not a perfect movie, but definitely worth the time if you enjoy surrealistic stories.

8/10

Tedious, uninteresting pablum that was supposed to be mind-blowing, but fails miserably. After 10 minutes you notice there's something wrong with the rhythm of the directing; after 20 minutes you start both yawning and wondering what are the odds to blow it completely if you have a decent crew and a potentially good plot. The end of the movie is supposed to be explanation of the plot and the end of the suffering for the main character - but no, it is the end of the Chinese torture toward the watcher executed by an amateurish director.

And all of this is written by someone who has 'Jacob's Ladder' in his top ten list of movie masterpieces...