Closer and Closer (1996)

hyped garbage

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

After the Christmas TV marathon with Alicia Witt, now i have the Spring one with Kim Delaney. I have never really understood why Kim never made up on the big screen while she shows on TV screen that she is really excellent : here, the part suits her like a glove because she plays a intelligent, strong willed woman but with a fragility side. In a way, it's reminiscent of King's « the dark half » as a fiction characters unleashes mayhem and blood to get its author ! Sure there is no paranormal here but the bloody path and the thriller is really well done ! In addition, to have Kim stuck in a wheelchair and in her fantastic lodge is really powerful : it has also a funny historic appeal as in 1996, Kim was indeed a privileged user of the Web. Her law enforcement friends are really a nice bunch so at the end, this small movie worths and beats a lot of blockbusters as everything is reunited into a tense, romantic thriller with one the best actress for that ! Highly recommended !

(There are Spoilers) Somewhat muddled serial killer mystery thriller involving crime writer Kate Saunders who has somehow set off an internet crazed sicko to commit the crimes that she's writing about in her novels.Kate a victim of a crime that left her paralyzed from the waist down has gotten into writing about this psycho killer that she named Byron Gar or short for the "Gargoyle Killer". Living alone in the wilds of Washington State Kate has her home turned into a massive electronic security command center with her vicious German Shepard-Te Amo-guard dog and a twelve gage shotgun as back up. With only good fiend and fellow paraplegic B.J helping Kate out,in building up her upper body, in rehabilitating herself she has no use for anyone else, besides her literately agent, on the outside world.It's when this person gets in touch with Kate through the internet that it becomes obvious that he's on a murder rampage and giving her the inside scoop on the crimes that he commits. Using the same M.O as Kate's fictitious killer Byron Gar, or the "Gargoyle Killer", the man murders his victims the very same way. The killer grabs his victims, all young females, from behind before running a dagger or stiletto through them. After murdering his victims the killer writes with their blood on the walls or windows of his victims home the word "Sicka" or "Dagger" in Latin.With the local police and FBI called in to solve the copycat, from Kate's novel, killings the killer becomes more and more brazen to the point where he starts a nation wide spree of murders from Miami Florida to where Kate is in Northern Washington State. By the time it becomes apparent, after a major false alarm, who the killer is it's almost too late for Kate in that with everyone, with the exception of Kate, thinking that he's in police custody he pops up out of the blue and into Kate's living room.Average made for TV thriller with nothing that will really surprise you in who the killer is and what his reasons are for trying to implicate Kate in his string of killings that cover, from coast to coast, nine states! There's also no solid information provided in the movie in who was responsible for Kate's falling down a balcony and crippling herself! Which we constantly see over and over again in a number of grainy black and white flashbacks.As for Kate herself she in fact did kill her fictitious serial killer Byron Gar off in her second novel "Gargoyle II" which may have been the reason for the real life psycho coming on the scene. He felt that Kate was actually writing about him and when he was no longer around, in Kate's book, her decided to keep himself alive by keeping himself, in his murder spree, in both the news and in Kate's, by contacting her on the internet, mind!

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw what the public could be made to think was email back in 1996. Apparently email is an interactive discussion (similar to a chat) with lame voice synthesis reading every comment out loud. And some of the other "tech" aspects are also laugh-out-loud funny. I'd swear the "high tech" communications centre she has actually has a few Commodore 64 monitors in it. Almost like watching the movie Hackers nowadays, I guess.Despite the fact that for most of the movie the lead actress carries off the illusion of being disabled, the final part of the movie has an unexplained use of her legs which somehow I can't ignore. I mean, why include something so stupid? Anyway, to sum up: the plot is pretty predictable, the acting bad, the killer quite guessable. But it can be amusing in a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 kind of way I guess.

This film is nothing special at all. The story reminded me of COPYCAT amongst others. It's pretty predictable and the acting is very standard. Something to see only if you've got nothing better to do. 5/10