Anamorph (2007)

Sadly Over-hyped

Am I Missing Something?

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Willem Dafoe in the role of a retiring detective haunted by his most famous case, a serial killer named Uncle Eddie. When a copycat killer seems to emerge, Dafoe's character, Stan Aubray, becomes the main target and obsession for this new murderer. Basically, this is a crime mystery with some grue, and the added element of esoteric photography. Most of the detective work seems forced, especially Carl discovering mirror images in his metal coffee mug - really? The deserted Playland doesn't seem to warrant much curiosity from PD, and neither is it staked out or called a crime scene, so that one last spooky scene can be performed there. Aubray does not seem very intelligent, merely lucky, and the red herrings are truly all the other characters thrown in to keep you guessing, which is OK, if you don't mind being strung along.Now, the ending. SPOILER: The killer is Aubray. It's obvious to me he's been hallucinating for the sake of the audience, and only at the end are we allowed to see him morphing into "Michael." Now - if there IS a Michael, and Aubray is NOT the killer, then this ending REALLY sucks. As it is, the ending as I see it is still too transparent because I was guessing it was Aubray the whole time. He feels guilt, which has manifested as self-hatred, and then hatred of all things related. He wasn't being stalked, he was stalking himself. AUBRAY put the painting on the street, then bought it. Aubray knew exactly how these esoteric devices worked because he was expert at it. He was just stuffing down the other self - he really didn't know he was doing this. "But wait," you say, "what about when they showed a picture of Michael?" I think Aubray was imagining these things, but the filmmakers just went a step too far in covering this up and left it to our imaginations. OK, not a bad trick, but not well-played, if you ask me.The music was overdramatic, reminiscent of Marvel Comics movies, and so it goes for the Green Goblin. The plot was super-thin with no real subplots to dig into. The dialogue tried to be existential, arty and earthy all at the same time but I was mostly bored.What did I LIKE? That one of the most important jobs in the world is fighting crime, and being a detective, because it exposes and catches evil, and actually does some good, even after the fact, and I think the film tries in the first half of the film to make this point.Check out this quirky but loose film at your own risk. It's visually appealing and has a bit of philosophy to ponder, but the rest is window dressing.

Stan Aubray is something of a cold fish, which I suppose makes him an ideal role for the corporeal Willem Dafoe. He has no close friends, displays signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, lives in a starkly furnished apartment, secretly drinks and is haunted by a five-year-old case involving a serial killer who meticulously and symbolically composed his victims bodies. Now the killings have started again, and a hot-shot colleague in Aubray's department suspects that the arresting detective may actually himself be the original murderer.The plot of Henry Miller's bleak psychological thriller is undeniably intriguing, but Aubray is portrayed as such a remote, detached person that it's extremely difficult for the viewer to like him. The film is almost unremittingly dark, matching its protagonist's mental state and put me in mind of Se7en while I watched it, thanks largely to a series of murders and the bizarre manner in which the killer's victims are left for discovery.Dafoe gives an understated performance, and is really very good in a thankless role, but his performance isn't enough to leave you with any positive impression. The idea of focal distortion – the central theme of the film – is also an interesting one, but having come up with the idea, Miller and co-writer Tom Phelan seem to have struggled to come up with a suitable way in which to incorporate it into a serial-killer story.

If we look up the word 'Anamorphosis', from which the title of this film was derived, we get the following definition: Anamorphosis is a distorted projection or perspective requiring the viewer to use special devices or occupy a specific vantage point to reconstitute the image. "Ana – morphosis" comes from the Greek words meaning "formed again." (Source: Wikipedia) So it's basically a piece of artwork that is painted in such a way that if viewed from a particular point it will make a complete picture. Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn't get the complete picture when putting this rather poor effort together.A troubled cop, Stan Aubray, is investigating a series of murders that are thought to be copy-cats of a killer called "Uncle Eddie" whose case he investigated and was thought to have been killed five years previous. He is helped by his partner, Carl Uffner and art expert, Blair Collet. The art expert is needed because the killer places all of his victims in poses that depict works of art. I really can't say much more about this one, that is the basic premise of the movie.As I said earlier I found this a rather poor effort. I usually like the work of Willem Dafoe, but he must have seen something in the script we didn't see on the screen, because it is very poor. The pacing is way too slow and the dialogue, with great long pauses, is pretty dire. I did like the performance of Peter Stormare as Blair Collet; he was the one bright point in this movie. I will give honourable mentions to Willem Dafoe as Stan Aubray and Scott Speedman as Carl Uffner just for making the effort and turning up to make it.I usually enjoy a good serial killer movie, but this one is certainly not going to feature in any of my end of year awards… unless I do a top ten worst of the year! Over all, very poor and definitely NOT recommended.My score: 3.7/10

This is an interesting idea gone bad. The hidden meanings in art left as clues by a serial killer sounds intriguing, but the execution in "Anamorph" is excruciatingly slow and without much interest. There is no other way to describe the film except boring. The death clues are the only interesting part of "Anamorph". Everything connecting them is tedious. Willem Dafoe gives a credible performance as the investigator, but he has little to do with a script that is stretched to the limit. Several supporting character actors are wasted , including Peter Stormare as the art expert, James Rebhorn as the police chief, Paul Lazar as the medical examiner, and most notably Deborah Harry, who is featured on the back of the DVD case, yet only has a couple lines spoken through a cracked door. Not recommended. - MERK