Surveillance (2008)

Sorry, this movie sucks

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Sam Holloway (Bill Pullman) and Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) are FBI agents tracking a pair of serial killers. They are in a small town where some killings have just taken place and they are questioning the three witnesses. One witness is a police officer whose partner was murdered. A second witness is a coke slut (Pell James) whose boyfriend was killed. The third is an eight (almost nine) year old girl (Ryan Simpkins) whose family was murdered.They divide the three of them up and each group is questioned separately. The movie consists of flashbacks that conflict with the story that is being told. You immediately know something is amiss and the point of the film is to figure out the twist. Ryan Simpkins was perhaps the most interesting in the group.The twist isn't that great by today's standards, although the film did hold my interest.PARENTAL GUIDE: F-Bomb, kinky sex scene, no nudity

I rented this movie on a the recommendation that it was clever, and had a twist in the movie. Also, that it was a story based on perception of the witnesses the FBI are interviewing.Sadly, it is not clever. With today's movie, being clever means you need to fool the audience. Give them a susprise/shock with the story. This did not. I saw it coming half way through the movie, and the twist, was cliché.And as to the perception of each of the witnesses. Perception is what you believed happened. The witnesses stories weren't that at all. They simply lied.Dumb. Watchable as I did finish it (With some FFWD'ing).

This is my first review on IMDb that I just had to write as this movie as this was so much outside of my expectations... I cannot decide whether to put this movie in a genre of horror or some sci-fi crime where nearly all the characters belong to some strange other planet, because if I imagine all this happening on planet Earth, it is a really sad picture. First I thought it'll be some thrilling FBI movie and great for relaxation after a long working day. Well, I was quite wrong. This is a kind of movie after which you might not sleep well couple of nights or couple of weeks depending on how strong your psyche is. If I only look at the movie as a work of art, I could say it's a good movie, well shot, great director's work, good play by most of the actors, but from a certain point of view it's not much different from Alien, the 8th Passenger: when I first watched it many years ago, I found it extremely disturbing. Now I could watch it without the same level of stress, probably because I've watched so many similar movies over the years. After watching this movie my first thought was that it's shame that these great actors gave their name and worked for such a horrifying movie. I think the problem with it is that it is unrealistic to have all these characters and all the events happening in one movie...sort of over-realistic, over-saturated horror movie that might well work for creating more serial killers if that was the aim of the director. I cannot say I enjoyed the movie. I wish I could stop watching it at any point. I'd rather watch any Alien movie again, because I know that that's just a Sci-Fi, not real. This is a kind of movie after which you start thinking of putting more locks on the main door, lock your car whilst driving and look around with suspicion in anywhere outside of your home, even if you live in a safe area (e.g. me in England). Hopefully this move has nothing to do with the realities of American life these days ...

I like investigation movies, and looking at the description of this one I decided to give it a chance. I must say I liked it almost straight away... Never saw Bill Pullman playing so different.In the middle of the movie I felt something unpleasant in my stomach, and it didn't leave me till I finished watching it. I wouldn't say it was disturbing, but I just felt how real this could be. Real.Taking about David Lynch... I felt nothing like this watching his movies. I didn't feel it was real.But this one...I did believe. Very well made & very well played & very well directed.