The Secret Window

The Secret Window

This mind-bending thriller, written and directed by David Koepp, features two top-notched actors in Johnny Depp and John Turturro. Depp and Turturro bring to life Mort Rainey and John Shooter with the ease and beauty of an artist painting a masterpiece. Koepp certainly selected the appropriate cast members for this adaptation of Stephen King’s “Secret Window, Secret Garden.”

The movie begins with Mort discovering his wife having an affair. After a few brief moments, the film fast-forwards to six months later and Rainey sleeping on his tattered couch. Apparently, from the look of Depp, he has been spending many tortured days on the sofa trying to get over his wife’s infidelity and his apparent writer’s block.

No sooner than we realize that Mort is a world famous author, John Shooter (Turturro) shows up at the front door to accuse him of stealing his story. As would be assumed, Rainey denies that he has plagiarized the man’s work. The tall, imposing, creepy, hat-wearing stranger leaves his manuscript behind for Rainey to review with the promise that he would return to set things straight.

Throughout the movie Rainey flashes back to moments in his relationship with his wife. He also develops an understandable hatred for her boyfriend who seems to be around at the most inopportune times. Although proceeding somewhat amicably with their divorce, Mort develops an inability to sign the separation agreement, much to the dismay of his soon-to-be ex-wife and her new found soul mate.

As the film progresses, Shooter makes several more appearances threatening Rainey and those he loves. John conveys, in not so subtle terms, that he wants Rainey to re-write the ending to the story (the way it had originally been written) and name him the story’s author. As Mort attempts to prove he wrote the story before Shooter, gruesome and inexplicable events begin to transpire. Rainey’s world quickly spirals out of control and John Shooter begins to infiltrate every aspect of his life.

The ending is not all too shocking; however, it fits exactly with how this movie portrayed itself, which is to say a little slow and banal. If not for the beautiful setting and superb acting, this movie would have been a colossal failure. I was deeply disappointed in this film and may even go as far as saying that I will never get that one hour and thirty minutes of my life back. The film moved at a snails pace and really didn’t get to the point of actually being a thriller. If I had to make a suggestion, only watch this movie if you absolutely have nothing better to do! This motion picture gets 2 stars because, Depp and Turturro gave some very convincing performances even with a shallow and unimagined script. If you ever have a chance to see Secret Window, you may want to sneak out of it!

That’s How Matt Sees It!