| Secret Window |
Secret Window film poster |
| Directed by |
David Koepp |
| Produced by |
Gavin Polone,
Ezra Swerdlow |
| Written by |
Stephen King (novel),
David Koepp |
| Starring |
Johnny Depp,
John Turturro,
Maria Bello,
Timothy Hutton |
| Music by |
Philip Glass,
Geoff Zanelli (uncredited) |
| Distributed by |
Sony Pictures Entertainment |
| Release date(s) |
March 12, 2004 |
| Running time |
96 min |
| Language |
English |
| Budget |
US$40,000,000 |
| Gross revenue |
$92,913,171 (worldwide) |
Secret Window (2004) is a psychological thriller movie, starring Johnny Depp and John Turturro. It was written and directed by David Koepp, based on the novella Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King, featuring a musical score by Philip Glass and Geoff Zanelli. The story appeared in King's collection Four Past Midnight. The film was released on March 12, 2004, by Columbia Pictures.
Plot
Johnny Depp plays successful writer Mort Rainey, who is suffering from writer's block and has retreated to an isolated lakeside cabin in the face of a divorce from his wife, Amy (Maria Bello), following his discovery of his wife cheating on him with Ted Milner (Timothy Hutton), now her boyfriend. Upon this discovery, Mort confronted the two of them with an unloaded gun, instigating an angry dispute that, although not ending in violence, continues to trouble the three of them. Afterwards, Mort retreated to his secluded cabin, living alone in the woods. Mort is confronted one day by the mysterious John Shooter (John Turturro) who accuses him of plagiarism. Shooter gives Mort a manuscript he claims to have written.
At first, Mort regards Shooter as mentally ill and throws away the book. But his housekeeper takes it out of the garbage believing it was his and instead of throwing it away again he cannot stop thinking about it, and finally reads it. It is almost exactly alike, with different names and sentence arrangements. The movie follows Mort's struggles to prove conclusively to Shooter and to himself that he has not plagiarized the story. Shooter continually harasses Mort and later kills his dog, an Australian Cattle Dog named Chico. As the story progresses, Mort hires a private investigator (Charles S. Dutton) and asks the help of the local sheriff, who doesn't believe him. The investigator asks if there are any witnesses, and Mort remembers a local man saw them together. But Shooter then murders both the investigator and the man and leaves them in a car. Mort then pushes the car into the river, since he thinks the murders will be pinned on him. Shooter also burns down the house of Mort's soon-to-be ex-wife. Mort is convinced that Ted is the culprit responsible for the burning.
Mort eventually locates the magazine that proves he published "Secret Window" before Shooter wrote "Sowing Season." He goes to the post office, where he gets the story. But when he gets out of his car, the sheriff approaches him with a smirk asking him if he could ask a few questions. Mort then leaves. But when Mort gets the magazine, he finds that the story has been cut out. Mort's inner voice tells him that since the magazine was sent to him in a sealed UPS package, Shooter could not have tampered with it. Prompting from his own conscience leads Mort to the realization that Shooter is not real, only a figment of Mort's imagination brought so vividly to life through undetected dissociative identity disorder to personify the dark side of Mort's personality and to commit acts that Mort himself feels he could not commit (murder and arson). Through his dialogue with his imagined counterpart, he begins to realize the truth: he has lost his grip on reality as insanity has started to set in. (This scene includes the moment where Mort sees his back, instead of his front, reflected in the mirror above the mantelpiece - much like Magritte's 1937 painting La reproduction interdite.). During this revelation, his concerned wife drives up to his cabin, finding the cabin vandalized and distraught, with the word "Shooter" carved into the wood and painted on other surfaces. As she searches, she finds an almost empty bottle of Jack Daniels on a table and empty packs of Pall Mall cigarettes, presumably Shooter's favorites. Amy initially interprets the empty bottle as the reason for Mort's major shifts in personality over the past few months, mentally writing off his irritability to the alcohol. Mort finally reveals himself at the same moment that Amy sees a carving explaining that "shooter" actually means "shoot her". Mort, now wearing "Shooter's" hat, attacks and chases her, eventually wounding her badly enough to keep her from running. Ted arrives and, hearing Amy's calls for help, walks into Mort's ambush. Amy, still horrified, can only watch as Mort murders Ted with a quick blow from the shovel. Reciting "shooter's ending" he moves in and kills her as well.
Afterwards, Mort changes profoundly - his writer's block is finally over and his passion for life returns. The movie, however, ends on a rather sinister note. The local sheriff stops by Mort's cabin to warn him against shopping in town any more (as his presence is disturbing the locals) and informs Mort that he knows what he did--though he lacks proof--and notices that Mort is cooking a fresh crop of corn from his backyard garden. As he promises Mort that he'll send him to prison when they find the bodies, Mort dismisses the statement nonchalantly, and replying that "The ending is the most important part of the story. This one is very good." It is then revealed to the audience that by growing and consuming corn from the garden where his wife and her lover are buried, Mort is slowly trying to destroy all the evidence needed to incriminate him as the plants are tearing up the bodies for nutrients.
Cast
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a rating of 46% based on 157 reviews. On Metacritic, the movie has a score of 46 (Mixed or average reviews) out of 100. Roger Ebert awarded it 3 stars out of a possible four, stating that "[Secret Window] could add up to a straight-faced thriller about things that go boo in the night, but Johnny Depp and director David Koepp ... have too much style to let that happen." He continues by noting that "[t]he story is more entertaining as it rolls along than it is when it gets to the finish line. But at least King uses his imagination right up to the end, and spares us the obligatory violent showdown that a lesser storyteller would have settled for." On the other hand, Ian Nathan from Empire Magazine only awarded the film 2 stars out of a possible 5, stating that "The presence of the sublime Depp will be enough to get Secret Window noticed, but even his latest set of rattling eccentricities is not enough to energise this deadbeat parlour trick." The film currently holds a 6.4/10 on the Internet Movie Database based on more than 45,000 votes. It was a modest box office success, succeeding at recouping its budget of $40,000,000 with a worldwide gross of $92,000,000.
See also
External links
References
