2
Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance is, at times, smart and scary. But its would-be twist ending—made to please the hardest nihilists—moves it into territory that alienates a larger audience that might like the identity games and sometimes funny sadism in the early sections. The action takes place in terrain that seems inherited from Lynch’s father, David: the bad America in the middle of nowhere. Two FBI agents trail a pair of killers. Agent Anderson (Julie Ormond) and Agent Hallaway (Bill Pullman) query the survivors of a mysterious trauma: Bobbi (Pell James), a drugged-out goodtime girl; Jim (French Stewart), a wounded police officer; and a little girl named Stephanie (Ryan Simpkins), traumatized and silent. Lynch tries to finesse that most tiresome quality of movies about serial killers on the rampage. She makes them omniscient, able to take on rooms full of people, to walk unnoticed, etc. If you’re going to make them supernatural like vampires, you might as well give them fangs. (By Richard von Busack from Metroactive.com)
Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance is, at times, smart and scary. But its would-be twist ending—made to please the hardest nihilists—moves it into territory that alienates a larger audience that might like the identity games and sometimes funny sadism in the early sections. The action takes place in terrain that seems inherited from Lynch’s father, David: the bad America in the middle of nowhere. Two FBI agents trail a pair of killers. Agent Anderson (Julie Ormond) and Agent Hallaway (Bill Pullman) query the survivors of a mysterious trauma: Bobbi (Pell James), a drugged-out goodtime girl; Jim (French Stewart), a wounded police officer; and a little girl named Stephanie (Ryan Simpkins), traumatized and silent. Lynch tries to finesse that most tiresome quality of movies about serial killers on the rampage. She makes them omniscient, able to take on rooms full of people, to walk unnoticed, etc. If you’re going to make them supernatural like vampires, you might as well give them fangs. (By Richard von Busack from Metroactive.com)