I'm way behind the curve on this one. It came out in 2008, amid some fanfare, and I've wanted to see it since I heard about it when it was still in production, but for one reason or another, I never got around to watching it. Of course, there have been a lot of negative reviews by now, and that's one reason I've avoided it. I really hate it when movies are boring and/or stupid, especially when they have a lot of talent behind them like this one does. Then they really have no excuse. But I love Clive Barker and I love gory horror flicks, so I might as well finally give this a chance.
This movie is about a photographer who tries to capture great photos of the city but spends most of his time listening to a police scanner so he can run around chasing ambulances and getting cheap shots of tragedies in order to pay the bills. When he finally gets a chance at a big break with a famous artist interested in showing his work, he becomes more determined to capture great photos. While roaming the streets at night, he crosses paths with a serial killer who targets late night subway passengers. Soon, he becomes obsessed with tracking the killer, and this obsession quickly puts he and his girlfriend in danger.
There's some serious acting chops here. Bradley Cooper plays the photographer, Leslie Bibb plays his girlfriend, and Brooke Shields plays the famous artist. There are some other well known character actors who are recognizable too. A good cast, which is promising. The gore is icky and nasty and plentiful, and the story is interesting. What is it about Clive Barker and his obsession with people becoming fascinated by and attracted to violence and evil? I see that theme recurring in a lot of his writing. It works though. It makes this movie more believable to me (or at least more intriguing as I like this guy and I want to see him fight the bad guy and survive, though being a character in a Clive Barker story doesn't bode well for him or his life expectancy).
Some of the violence is a little too stylized and cartoon-y, which is annoying and yanks me back out of the story after the characters just finished drawing me in. Plus the killer is not very believable. Something about his performance doesn't ring true. He reminds me of a James Bond villain, which doesn't help me suspend my disbelief. Once the movie reaches a certain point, however, the killer managed to be creepy enough that I didn't really care about any flaws in his performance. Creeping around dark corners, he's scary enough to work for the sake of the movie.
And then...I don't know what happens. Either the people making the movie took a bunch of drugs or I did, because the movie goes absolutely apeshit insane at some point. The movie was never a bastion of realism, but whatever grounding it ever had in reality, it loses it completely. There's still some fun to be had with the buckets of gore and the action packed climax, but it still got ridiculous at some point, which made it impossible for me to stay engaged in the story. It's a shame, too, because there's lots of good here, but it refuses to tie together in the end, and it gets really stupid and annoying, too. Oh well. I'm still glad I finally checked it out. Now let's never speak of it again.
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