Review: Tell Tale

Josh Lucas is a widower who has just had a heart transplant, whilst his young daughter (Beatrice Miller) has a rare bone disease. He’s also just started dating his daughter’s doctor, played by Lena Headey. All of a sudden, Lucas starts having strange visions that don’t appear to be his own. Meanwhile, his heart seems to be overly agitated around people Lucas doesn’t even know. Could it be that his new heart is trying to tell him something? Brian Cox plays a police detective who becomes interested in Lucas’ actions and movements, whilst Dallas Roberts turns up as a sinister surgeon.

A good cast is wasted in this Michael Cuesta (something called “L.I.E.”) flick that tries for a modern version of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’. The fact that the story presented here mostly resembles ‘The Hands of Orlac’ (not by Poe, but a 1926 German silent film) is but one of this messy film’s problems. It’s a good place to start, though, because there is absolutely nothing of Poe’s tale of murder and madness. ‘Orlac’ was about a pianist who loses his hands in an accident and sees them surgically replaced by those of a killer, driving him to murder. There’s even an excellent episode of “The Simpsons” that is closer to Poe than this film is, and it’s truly shameless false advertising. Not to mention the fact that ‘Orlac’ has always been a lesser story (as anyone who has seen “Body Parts” can attest to). Oh, well, it’s better than “The Tomb” at any rate.

It starts off promisingly enough, with an icky but appropriate opener literally showing a human heart. But aside from that and an absolutely chilling late cameo by Dallas Roberts (who is sensationally cold-blooded), the film opts for a dramatic approach rather than a horror approach. Combine that with its modern day setting and you’ve got a great cure for insomnia, because the pacing will always suffer from such an approach. Why bother choosing either the Poe story of ‘Orlac’ if you’re just going to remove so much of the horror? It really pissed me off. The sick daughter subplot in particular was unnecessary clutter. Yes, it brought Lucas and Headey together, but why not just make her his doctor alone?

Another big problem is that our main protagonist (played by an often shirtless Josh Lucas, for all you ladies out there) spends much of the film stationary and having visions or in a hospital bed near death. That ain’t entertainment. I did like the idea that Lucas’ blood and immune system start to more resemble the donor. That was interesting, but that’s about all, aside from appropriately thumping use of sound. Some of the visuals are interesting including multi-coloured lighting, but the editing and stupid time-lapse photography (which I’ve always hated) were incredibly annoying. I find flash cuts to be an exceptionally lazy, unoriginal way to show ‘visions’. The ending is appalling, too, closing on a revelation that the audience doesn’t know how to feel about, which isn’t the same as wanting to be spoon-fed. It’s just being a lazy writer.

The cast is good, though. Lucas, normally charming is likeable enough, if dour, though I’d still argue that he’s not cast to his best advantage. Lena Headey (who, with her native British accent sounds remarkably like Keira Knightley) is a billion times better in this than she was in the awful horror pic “The Broken”, though “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” still represent her best work. Brian Cox is interesting her, as he gets better the longer the film goes on, but in his early scenes he seems (and is certainly dressed) more like a drug dealer than a cop. He’s OK, but a bit ‘off’.

Produced by Tony (“Top Gun”, “Enemy of the State”) and Ridley (“Alien”, “Blade Runner”, “Gladiator”) Scott, the film was probably meant to be a bigger deal than it actually turned out to be. Unfortunately, fraudulent titling, a wrong-headed approach, and uneven casting sink it. It’s not awful, but it’s unlikely to please anyone. The screenplay is by David Callaham (“Doom”, “Horsemen”, “The Expendables”), who clearly doesn’t know his Poe as well as he thinks he does.

Rating: C