Secret Window (2004)
Directed by David Koepp
Mort Rainey, a writer just emerging from a painful divorce with his ex-wife, is stalked at his remote lake house by a psychotic stranger and would-be scribe who claims Rainey swiped his best story idea. But as Rainey endeavors to prove his innocence, he begins to question his own sanity.
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19 films that influenced Secret Window
What critics say influenced Secret Window
"The Dark Half," his novel published that same year, explores the same themes again, so it would take a real King novice (or movie novice for that matter) to find any thrills in this thriller.
It's a movie that aspires only to entertain with easy apprehension, and harbors no delusions that it's anything more than second-rate horror cobbled together from familiar bits of other King stories (notably "The Dark Half" and "Misery") -- in short, a corny goosepimpler for genre gourmets who wish more drive-in flicks were made with a crafty cinematic élan.
There are no real surprises here; King had already mined the psyche of an unhinged writer with more depth in his novel The Dark Half, which was made into a very good film by horror master George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) in 1993.
If the stranger isn't distracting enough, Rainey still pines for his ex-wife, who's found some normalcy with her new beau (Timothy Hutton, who starred in 1993's underrated King adaptation, "The Dark Half").
I've seen four movie adaptations of Stephen King books that have writers as heroes -- The Shining (1980), Misery (1990), The Dark Half (1993), and now Secret Window -- and I know of a few others.
Throughout his extensive career, Stephen King has habitually attempted (in novels such as The Dark Half and Misery) to confront the relationship between the artist and his work, and that thematic preoccupation once again comes into play in David Koepp’s Secret Window.
Weird religious iconography, wide-brimmed Amish hats, some sort of sinister cornfield à la Children of the Corn?
It's a movie that aspires only to entertain with easy apprehension, and harbors no delusions that it's anything more than second-rate horror cobbled together from familiar bits of other King stories (notably "The Dark Half" and "Misery") -- in short, a corny goosepimpler for genre gourmets who wish more drive-in flicks were made with a crafty cinematic élan.
Stephen King has explored some of the special challenges faced by writers in The Shining and Misery.
The premise is a minor twist on his Misery, wherein an author holed up in the woods gets taken hostage by a loony who's read one too many of his books.
There's much of value here despite the fact that some of it plays like a Stephen King's Greatest Hits collection (the Misery connection, for instance, and the play on the name "Shooter" that's very like the "redrum" business in The Shining).
The latter quality may come from King's own much-noted habit of plagiarizing himself — there are fairly obvious nods to Misery and The Shining here, as well as allusions to other works that fans will no doubt recognize.
I've seen four movie adaptations of Stephen King books that have writers as heroes -- The Shining (1980), Misery (1990), The Dark Half (1993), and now Secret Window -- and I know of a few others.
There are Stephen King novellas that inspire great movies like The Shawshank Redemption and then there are Stephen King novellas that inspire cinematic hash like Secret Window.
Adapted and directed by David Koepp, "Secret Window" belongs to the elite category of King adaptations, such as "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Shining," with its first-rate cast and production elements.
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The words “Based on a novella by Stephen King” probably don’t inspire as much excitement as once they did, and with good reason: for every Misery, there’s a Dreamcatcher, a Hearts in Atlantis and a Tommyknockers.
Sure, his association with earlier films like “Maximum Overdrive” and “Christine” didn’t help the box office, but it gave the movies a decent buzz.
There are no real surprises here; King had already mined the psyche of an unhinged writer with more depth in his novel The Dark Half, which was made into a very good film by horror master George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead) in 1993.
Secret Window is nothing if not a pastiche of past big-screen thrillers, recycling most of its elements from The Shining, Misery, The Dark Half and just about every other King project this side of The Mangler.
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(That clincher is ultimately one of the most on-target comments on writing I've seen in any film since David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, which may just be the best movie ever made about writing.
And as a director, he made the unjustly overlooked 2000 supernatural thriller "Stir of Echoes," with Kevin Bacon, which shimmered with sustained eeriness.
David Koepp, coming off a string of successes as a director ("Stir of Echoes") and writer ("Panic Room," "Spider-Man"), extends his impressive run here by not tipping his hand too soon.
Although writer/director David Koepp ("Stir of Echoes") gives the proceedings an unsettling atmosphere and Johnny Depp delivers one of his typically fine-tuned performances, "Secret Window" wraps up with an ending that's as preposterous as, well, the ending of most later Stephen King works.
Screenwriter-director David Koepp ( "Stir of Echoes" ) revels in the horror-flick irrationality of Depp's character, who is dumb enough to keep going back to the cabin again and again, even after Shooter graduates from killing dogs to arson and murder, predictably implicating the novelist along the way.
His previous film, the overly conventional ghost story Stir of Echoes (1999), is one example, and the transparent way Secret Window gives up its own secret is another.
Fortunately, writer-director David Koepp (Stir of Echoes) complicates the tension by focusing on Rainey's dealings with his ex-wife (Maria Bello) and her boyfriend (Timothy Hutton), a buttinsky who may or may not have sinister intentions.