Z/Web

When I first heard about this film I wasn’t that interested because the concept sounded limited: a girl, previously a victim who escaped a serial killer, now thinks her sister has been abducted by the same guy, but the cops don’t believe her so she’s forced to find him on her own.

That seemed weak to me because as soon as she’s got any real evidence the cops would figure out the truth, right? Except the trailers leave out the key bit of info that the girl has psychological problems and had been institutionalized, and the cops never found any evidence that anyone had abducted her in the first place (which makes the police reaction more believable). Throw that into the mix and we’re into Interesting Land. We’re unsure — just like the main character herself — if she’s losing her mind or really onto something.

The film doesn’t play up that angle as much as I like — it’s more implied than confronted — but we still end up with a decent thriller. It’s quite exciting having her look for a killer everyone thinks is just her imagination while on the run from the cops herself, as they have heard she’s carrying an unregistered firearm and want her stopped. She’s got a deadline, too, as she knows the killer kills his victims at night so she’s only got the one day to rescue her sister.

It’s a far from perfect film: there are tons of niggling flaws throughout, little skips in logic that I found distracting. Sometimes the cops don’t seem to be responding quite realistically, or the investigative path the girl follows is a little too convenient. There are strange, I-don’t-believe-it moments, such as when a guy tells her rented his van to a complete stranger for $200 and he doesn’t know the guy’s name, phone number, address, or anything. Yeah, that’s gonna happen. I lend my vehicle all the time to strangers!

But most of these flaws are just tiny things that hardly matter. For example, when she borrows a friend’s car she takes the entire set of keys — meaning the friend loses her house keys?

The bad guy is also poorly handled. I don’t want to give anything away, but he’s an amazingly stupid serial killer (bringing into question how he could have gone so long without getting caught). And the girl — who’s quite clever and resourceful throughout, doesn’t do something in her escape from him that she does later in the film. It seemed like an obvious thing to me and it felt odd that she doesn’t do it.

But despite these flaws, we still have an intriguing film. The ending, while not perfect, is satisfying. This kind of a film really depends on the ending because it’s all build-up and I worried they would screw it up and leave me frustrated. It’s a slightly odd ending, mostly because of what a dummy the bad guy is, but it does just enough to work.

The bottom line is that I liked the movie. There’s tension (no real scares), it moves at a high pace, there are good performances, the story’s above average (no real depth, but better than most), and it’s set in Portland, Oregon, near where I live. Don’t expect too much and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

This is a fascinating idea — a quirky modern-day version of an Alice in Wonderland type drug trip — but sadly there’s not much to it beyond the gimmick.

The plot is simple enough: an American girl in London, a billionaire’s daughter, gets lost with amnesia and has adventures somewhat analogous to those of the original Alice. In this case she takes some pills that are supposed to help her memory but might just be scrambling her mind as everything gets a bit crazy after that. She meets up with villains and bizarre people and sees strange things.

I did like many aspects of this. There are wonderful gems: various characters resemble their Wonderland equivalents, a lot of the dialog is variations on dialog from the novel, there are tons of subtle (and clever) Alice references, and there’s a lot of fun humor.

Unfortunately, the settings are so weird and you really don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on for about 70% of this movie, and that it makes it difficult to follow and appreciate. Some of the dialog shoots at you so fast and crazily you can’t keep up. That, of course, is similar to Alice, where the conversations are certainly strange, but whereas in the book they are light and fun here the darker tone and modern setting makes far heavier and less entertaining.

I like dense material, but this is material that feels dense without a reason for being dense. There are many scenes that feel like they were written just to have an Alice link but don’t advance the story at all.

In the end, the plot is just too shallow and barely anything happens. The “revelation” at the end is too trivial and weak. It almost works, but for all of the mysterious build-up it needed to be about ten times more powerful. Instead it falls limp and is too predictable.

This can be worth watching if you’re in the right mood (perhaps smoking mushrooms, ha ha) and I certainly did really like certain moments and some of the interesting visuals, but it’s much too uneven and inscrutable for most people.