Paranoid

The stressed top model Chloe (Jessica Alba) is invited by an acquaintance to a dinner party with some friends of him in a house far from London. She faints and when she wakes up, everybody has left the house but the owner Stan (Ian Glen) and his weird family. She decides to stay until the next morning, but during the night she finds that the group indeed abducted her to use and tape her in sexual orgy.

What a weird and bizarre movie this "Paranoid" is! I am a fan of Jessica Alba, but she is simply awful, with one of the most ridiculous face and performance I have ever seen on screen. I liked the rude but definitely perfect definition of another user about her expression: "seems related to a struggle with constipation". The story has also a huge inconsistency, with a very bad direction and screenplay. Last but not the least, the Brazilian cable television NET summarizes in their crap magazine that "a woman is stalked in a haunted house after having troubles with her car". The same happens in the IMDb Plot Outline: "A young woman is stranded at a mysterious lodge after her car crashes nearby." What movie are they referring to? My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "A Casa do Mal" ("The House of Evil")

This is one of the worst "movies" you'll ever see. There is a very good reason that it went straight to video, because it's just plain awful. I wouldn't recommend this to someone I really hated, I don't hate anyone that badly. The story is as terrible as the directing, and only the acting is worse. Alba is just awful here and will set new lows in movie performances that will make Luke Skywalker look like a god. The movie's plot isn't worth mentioning because after the first few minutes you won't care. It's about 90 minutes but seems like the Titanic revisited. Don't see this for Alba, just don't see it and do yourself a favor.

After reading the reviews at this site, I was expecting and extremely bad

movie like the undead or similar. However for a low budget film I thought it was very watchable and worth renting.

The biggest problem with this film was the lead actress Jessica Alba. Her performance was mediocre at best. The support cast however were more than competened and with a better lead actor the film would have been more than decent. Unfortunately Jessica let the film, the cast and the director down

Its is worth a watch

Alba fans be warned: This review contains the odd spoiler.

Jessica, Jessica, Jessica... (sigh). Those almond-shaped eyes, pillowy lips, wavy dark hair, strokeable olive skin, utterly perfect body, cute speaking voice, tight flawless behind... Like Cindy Crawford, Rosanna Arquette and Mariah Carey, Jessica Alba is one of those women who occupies a very special place in my affections. If only "Paranoid" was as appealing as she is.

Made by Sky Pictures (and sad proof that Sky is not the HBO of Britain), John Duigan's thrill-less thriller casts the gorgeous and sexy Jessica as an American model doing some work in London, who's plagued by a stalker, on good terms with her ex, and is persuaded to spend some time at a friend's house in the country, only to find that said house is seemingly entirely populated by weirdos (Iain Glen, Ewen Bremner, Jeanne Tripplehorn etc). The only interesting aspect of the movie not related to Miss Alba's charms is that our heroine is perpetually surrounded by weirdos even when she doesn't know it.

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

Her flat in London is spied on by a neighbour (Kevin Whately) who, though basically a stalker (he found her address book and thus started to be fascinated by her), is ultimately the one who rescues her from death in the end. Unfortunately they never meet, thereby denying us the closest thing we'll get to a "Dark Angel"/"Inspector Morse" crossover. But the last scene (revealing the identity of the phantom phone caller) indicates the poor girl still has her share of creeps in her life, without even knowing it.

WE NOW RETURN TO OUR REVIEW, STILL IN PROGRESS.

"Paranoid" does occasionally successfully conjure up an edgy, pervy atmosphere, and the cast does try their best, but the low budget and the off-key writing and directing from Duigan (on unfamiliar territory here, literally because he's Australian and figuratively considering his far superior dramas "The Year My Voice Broke," "Flirting" and "Sirens") defuse any impact. Jessica's performance is even more sullen and depressed than her character is supposed to be... and her lack of energy is certainly shared by the viewer. (Why she and Jeanne Tripplehorn were in this movie is beyond me. In fact, why ANYONE was in it is beyond me.) Unexciting and occasionally unpleasant, anti-Murdoch advocates ("See the kind of tosh Rupert puts out?"), Kevin Whately devotees and die-hard Alba fans are the only ones who need apply.

By the way, note the mocked-up "FHM" cover that she appears on at one point. Jessica has never done the famed lad mag in real life, an oversight I demand be corrected forthwith.

It all just seems a bit formulaic. These days unless you have a completely fresh idea (which this wasn't) then you have to add something on (which this doesn't), otherwise you're just making the same movie with different actors. I liked the idea to take the story away from America which gave it that "you're along way from home" spooky, kind of feeling. But I feel they sacrificed good acting for this which is a shame because if they could've combined both I'm sure it would have been slightly more successful.

None the less it's not all bad. For Jessica Alba fans it'll be easier to sit through than some of her other duller movies. And for everyone else, well maybe there's something there for people who enjoy spooky type endings, but if not, there are definitely other ones out there to see before this.