Rating of
0.5/4
Stay Away
Alan @ Transbuddha - wrote on 12/23/08
Stay is the type of movie that today’s Hollywood loves to produce. Find a couple of likeable stars (not too expensive ones) and put together a slick looking film with a twist ending with enough odd camera moves and flashbacks to try and hide the fact that there is nothing actually worth watching. The film looks and feels like a film student’s exercise in film techniques he only recently read about and doesn’t really comprehend. The “story” (I refuse to call it plot) involves Ewan McGregor as a psychiatrist with a suicidal patient and a girlfriend who once tried to kill herself. Problem is his patient is so dark and angry we don’t care if he kills himself and Naomi Watts’ (making her second appearance on the list) character is so needy and whiny we want her to die. McGregor worries that either or both may attempt to kill themselves, but then maybe he doesn’t because that might not be the story after all. The film is filled with flashbacks, deja vu scenes where characters replay scenes over and over, and dream-like effects. The plot twist at the end offers an explanation that makes the twist in Flightplan look Hitchcockian by comparison. Aside from the fact that the solution it offers makes absolutely no logical sense and makes the structure of the film we watched actually impossible it’s just really, really lame. This film is a complete waste of celluloid and a tremendous waste of time.
