Movie Details
| Title: | Duress | |
| Director: | Jordan Barker | |
| Year: | 2009 | |
| Genre: | Psychological Thriller | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 09.27.09 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 09.27.09 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: FantasticFest 2009 In the words of Henri, "Day i'm-too-hung-over-to-remember-what-day-it-is" of fantastic fest was a day of transition for me. No midnight movie. Because of that, I only saw three films. The first film is Duress. Martin Donovan (whom I usually like) plays a dad with a daughter and his wife/her mom has just been killed in either some sort of accident or suicide or whatever. She zapped herself in the bathtub. So, because of his grief the whole movie has a dull blue color palette and everyone acts mopey. In the first ten minutes or so, he says he's "thinking clearer" then sees a Tyler Durden-esque character insert himself into his life and make him accomplice-ize with a murder. It's at this point that I start hoping this killer dude is not just a figment of his imagination. The spoiler-free version of the rest of these notes is that the first 98% of this film is intolerably dull. Like unbelievably boring. it's basically the scene I described above repeated 10 times or so. Donovan's there like "oh don't hurt my family just leave me alone" and the weird european-accent-for-no-reason killer is like "we're in this together, you're just like me, and by that I mean a killer not European" over and over and over again until you think the movie's some sort of meta joke to put the audience in titular duress because they're somehow not walking out. But then the ending is not only not what I expected but actually a pretty decent explanation of events (even if it does feel a bit close to Dexter). I don't know if I thought the ending was good because I was so relieved it wasn't another Fight Club rip-off or because it's actually of quality, but either way I walked out thinking it had a good ending but not good enough to make it worth sitting through. Duu uuu uuu uu uuuuu uuuu uuuu uu uuuuuuu uuuuu uuu uuuu uuu ull good ending |
