The most disturbing part of "Secret Window" is not the bloody screwdriver sticking out of Chico the dog, who is sacrificed early on in the film. It's not John Turturro's eerie psuedo-Quaker character demanding revenge and it's not the violent, jagged writing carved all over the walls of Morton Rainey's cabin. The creepiest part of the movie comes after the plot has wrapped itself up and the credits are done rolling: the screen goes black and the disembodied voice of Johnny Depp drones the folk song "Shortnin' Bread."
About a half an hour from the end of the movie, Rainey (played by Depp) announces that, in a mystery story, "the ending is the most important part." In this case, the ending is the only thing that keeps "Secret Window" from being a typical thriller. And the literal ending -- Depp's song, which is the last thing we hear -- is just as unexpected and confusing as the denouement of the plot.
Morton Rainey is a mystery writer who lives alone in a cabin in the woods. He recently split from his wife, Amy (played by Maria Bello), after finding her in bed with another man. Since then, he has been unable to get any work done and lives the life of a textbook depressive: he sleeps too much, he eats unhealthily, and he snaps at his hapless housekeeper.
A more decisive blow to Rainey's creativity comes in the form of John Shooter (John Turturro), a farmer from Mississippi who accuses Rainey of stealing his story, "Secret Window." Shooter starts to terrorize Rainey, leaving ominous notes on the door and threatening to harm Rainey if he doesn't prove that he wrote the story first. What follows is a confusing and unbelievable story, in which murders are committed in the name of plagiarism.
The combined forces of Depp and Stephen King (who wrote the novella on which the screenplay was based) make "Secret Window" more than a hackneyed screamfest, but not much more. The movie seems pretty formulaic until King makes an almost palpable appearance: as the film's bizarre ending begins to unwind, the supernatural influence of the author announces itself in an inexplicable beam of light that splits the walls of Rainey's house in two. Rainey begins to talk to himself -- first in his head, then in person, thanks to the help of CGI-duplicated Depps.
It's hard to think of any actor who could play the role of the broodingly crazy, yet bizarrely comic artist like Johnny Depp. His performance is able to simultaneously represent these two poles. Perhaps the best example of this is the oddly placed "Talking Heads" reference that occurs when Rainey watches his ex-wife and her new lover kissing outside their old home; deadpan, Rainey stares out the window and declares, "This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife."
Depp skillfully shows Rainey's transformation from little boy to lascivious man. At the beginning of the film, Depp's Rainey behaves somewhat like the grown Tom Hanks character in "Big." He only eats childish junk food (Doritos, Mountain Dew, peanut butter and jelly), he sings to his dog, and he sneaks cigarettes. The house is his playground, and, clad in a torn bathrobe, he dances about it (in a mincing Jack Sparrow-esque style) while flouting any authority the real adults (cops, bodyguards, store owners) in the movie try to enforce.
By the end, Rainey has become a man, a role that is somehow less believable than Depp's bratty child. He trades his ratty robe for a professorial getup of a button-up shirt, sweater, combed hair, and wire-rimmed glasses. In line at the grocery store, he hits on the girl from the post office. And he gets an exercise bike and a weight bench. That's right; Johnny Depp has a home fitness system.
Despite the complexity King assigns to Rainey, the rest of the characters are wooden stereotypes. Turturro's Shooter is the epitome of the Southern hick: violent, crude, and inarticulate. Bello's Amy is unsympathetic and annoying, and the townspeople of rural New York are all stoic and impassive. In this story about writers, it's hard to believe that there are no believable personalities besides Rainey.
In the end, characters and clues from earlier in the film are awkwardly resurrected to presumably create some kind of continuity, but the filmmakers fail to tie together all the loose ends. There are many moments in which characters accusingly confront one another with, "I know what you're doing and it's not going to work." If the viewers could address the characters, they would say, "I don't know what you're doing, but it's not working anyway."
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