Review: Twisted

The serial killer film is perhaps the trickiest of films to get right. A comedy doesn’t have to be gut-bustingly hilarious all the way through in order to work well (“The Blues Brothers”, for instance, also functions as a musical), and a horror film doesn’t have to scare you within an inch of your life in order to be effective (“Child’s Play” is one of my all-time favourite horror flicks, but I hardly cower behind my couch watching it). But in the case (no pun intended) of a serial killer film, if you can work out who the killer is early on, then you find yourself twiddling your thumbs as the characters try to catch up to you. The best example I’ve seen of a killer thriller that was almost impossible to guess the killer would be the underrated Christopher Lambert film “Knight Moves”. You’d have to be extremely savvy to work out whodunit there. If it also happens to fail to engage you with its characters or filmmaking and so on, then it’s even more unlikely that the film will come up smelling roses.

 

Welcome one and all to “Twisted”, an Ashley Judd thriller so appallingly transparent that I managed to guess who the killer was before the movie even started! What’s worse is how silly and frankly quite boring it is as well.

 

Judd, seriously troubled over the deaths of her parents long ago, is a San Francisco Homicide Inspector, who picks men up in bars (Good bars? Eh? Eh? See what I did there?) and frequently blacks out. As you do. When the bodies of some of her gentleman callers start turning up after a night Judd can’t seem to remember, alarm bells start sounding. Not that Superintendent (and legal guardian) Samuel L. Jackson actually takes her off the case…no, then we’d have no movie. Hmm, now there’s a thought... Anyway, Andy Garcia plays Judd’s smitten partner, seedy-looking Mark Pellegrino her lingering ex, Titus Welliver plays an A-hole cop, Leland Orser a snitch, and David Strathairn appears to be on a major dose of sedatives as the police shrink.

 

This is a shockingly scripted waste of time from the usually daring director Phillip Kaufman (director of the definitive version of “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers”). Surely this is a new record in inept screenwriting, the real culprit being writer Sarah Thorp. The whole enterprise doesn’t even get off the ground, and Ashley’s just not right for this Angelina Jolie-ish role. She seems too nice and huggable to be a hard-drinking, emotionally bruised, ball-breaking slut (But then again, I’ve never actually met her…) Garcia and Strathairn, meanwhile, look entirely embarrassed (Bad day at the track, David?) and the film contains Sam Jackson’s worst-ever performance, too (And not in a so-bad-it’s-good way). Yes, even worse than “The Spirit”, “Unthinkable”, and “Arena”. And is it just me, or is Leland Orser contractually obligated to appear in every serial killer film made in Hollywood? (“Se7en”, “Knight Moves”, “Saw”, “Resurrection”). Only Camryn Manheim, in a lively cameo, does anything remotely interesting, playing a somewhat enthusiastic forensics expert.

 

Easily one of the worst films of its type in recent decades. Fails in the most fundamental areas for this type of film, never once getting off the ground. A four-year old could write something more clever than this script.

 

Rating: F