... and yes I know it's from Stephen King's original material, but after you watch the entire thing it seems cinematically borrowed from a movie from five years before. SPOILERS SPOILERS (I REALLY MEAN IT!) SPOILERS! It seems so much borrowed that I almost titled my review "Fright Club", but then I figured anybody who saw the title and saw the first fifteen minutes of the film would guess the ending.Johnny Depp plays mystery writer Mort Rainey, living in his bathrobe in a house in the middle of nowhere, seemingly horribly resentful about a housekeeper whom he employed in the first place, working at odd hours, sleeping at even odder ones. Then a knock on the door. There is John Turturro, a composite of every weirdo he has ever played as John Shooter, dressed like a Mississippi preacher straight out of American Gothic, with a southern accent to match. And Shooter is angry. He claims that Rainey stole his story and he wants payback. Rainey doesn't take this guy seriously, and figures he is one of the many crackpots that minor celebrities like himself have to deal with every once in awhile. The guy leaves, but leaves his allegedly purloined story behind. Rainey ends up reading it and recognizes it as a near duplicate of his own "The Secret Window".The complicating factors? Rainey has plagiarized one time in his career in the past. Also, Rainey is not happy about his impending divorce. He keeps putting off signing the divorce papers although he and his wife have worked out the property settlement. Plus, his wife left him for a lowlife (Timothy Hutton as Ted) who is obviously interested in Mort's soon to be ex partly because of her looks, partly because of the settlement she gets in the divorce. Materialistic Ted is so obvious that you feel Rainey's soon to be ex is not only not very loyal, but not very bright.Well it turns out Shooter is aptly named, although guns are not really his thing. The violence this demanding man commits quickly escalates from first killing Rainey's dog, to torching Rainey's former home now occupied by his wife, to murder. But how could this one man, seemingly not that bright, manage to run circles around Rainey and all he employs to find out who Shooter really is and where he is from? He must have a source of inside information. Is it his wife? Ted? The guy he plagiarized years ago? Somebody else? Watch and find out.Honorable mention has to go to Charles S. Dutton as the P.I. Rainey turns to for insight and protection from this guy. Len Cariou plays the seemingly useless small town sheriff where Rainey lives. I said seemingly.The suspense builds superbly on this one with a score that really adds to the mood. I would probably give this one a nine if not for the ending that seems somewhat borrowed and definitely blue.

This movie is about a writer unexpectedly accused of plagiarism, after his traumatic and ill-resolved divorce. What could be just an intellectual setback quickly turns into a police case as the writer feels more threatened. We're facing a light thriller with some tension and a good script. But it takes a while to get to the most interesting moments and the first half will seem monotonous, with the conflict between the two central characters slowly becoming more dense. The end, with a good twist, will make up for that. There is a surreptitious link between the importance of film's end and the discussion between the main characters about the importance of the ending in a story.Johny Depp uses an intentional "I woke up now and I'm hung over" look to make his character more sympathetic to us. His character have much psychological depth and he manages to put it on screen. John Turturro is his antagonist but, at the same time, he completes Depp's character, insofar as the film relies on the rivalry between them. Turturro made an excellent deep southern accent and used a grim, sinister appearance to look more threatening than dangerous. The remaining cast has more secondary roles.

This is a rubbishy, cheesy B-movie that attempts to ride on the coat-tails of other 'twist' ending movies like THE MACHINIST and FIGHT CLUB, borrowing liberally from those two movies without ever taking itself seriously enough to be effective. As a result the film is goofy and predictable throughout, hindered by another 'kooky' turn from the increasingly stale Johnny Depp, and a script that spoon-feds the story to mindless viewers in an attempt to pull the rug out from under their feet. The problem is that the twist becomes startlingly obvious about ½ way through the film and the final scenes, while attempting to portray psychological disturbance, end up more like a silly rerun of the Michael Keaton flick MULTIPLICITY than the serious drama that they want to be.While Depp is boring, he's supported by a lot of decent actors. John Turturro makes for a suitably imposing bad guy and Charles S. Dutton, well he brings the screen to life as always. One of my favourite performances comes from Timothy Hutton, whose presence is a nod to another Stephen King adaptation, THE DARK HALF, in which he starred. The only bad thing is that he serves as a reminder that even this King novella is a rubbishy, half-developed version of an altogether better book and better film. Meanwhile, the less said about the disappointing Maria Bello, the better.While this film does start off quite well – despite the predictably of yet ANOTHER King offering with a weirdo writer as the leading character – things fall apart so badly as the story progresses. David Koepp, reasonably efficient in the past, lets the cabin-in-the-woods setting get to his head and poorly experiments with camera angles in an attempt to recreate the success of THE EVIL DEAD. There's a ludicrous rip on THE SHINING at the film's climax and, while it deserves kudos for going through with a murder that I thought it never would, it's clear that this should have had a harder rating, with severed heads and arterial blood to add to the horror aspect. As it is, the horror is lukewarm and rehashed, and aside from one good car-over-the-cliff scene, it sucks.

It was based on the novel, though the original title makes more sense than this film. Maybe they wanted to avert the spoiler. But I don't think it would have affected much, because the twist comes at the final segment. The tale of a writer who is in the middle of divorce and now living alone is the lake house got threatened by a stranger, because according to him he stole his story. Followed by many unpleasant events, how he gets out of the trouble told in the next half.Feels just an okay kind. Though Johnny Depp was good. The suspense was good, particularly in the first half, but later it comes falling down. The second half was average, the twist was not interesting enough. After some point, you might predict it, but the point is it was too familiar. I especially did not like the finale, it was like not in detail. Still a watchable film, because of the actor and for decently made. So I think worth a watch if you keep a low expectation.6/10