(Originally from Facebook – December 28, 2013)

When does “homage” become plagiarism? Wentworth Miller (yes, from “Prison Break”) walks a very fine line, I think, with his script. It draws heavily from Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt and Shirley Jackson’s novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and then Director Chan-Wook Park throws in nods to other Hitch films, most notably Psycho. There’s also a little of a famous Showtime series, but I don’t want to reveal too much. It was hard to put all of that aside, but I did and found it to be a fairly well-done, if derivative, thriller.

From what I can tell, it seems to be a divisive movie, with people either loving it or hating it. I’m pretty sure if I wasn’t aware of the various sources, I would have come down on the “loved it” side. I’m a fan of Park’s, and also of atmospheric thrillers. Reading the various posts on IMDB, I feel that many of those who hated it didn’t quite understand what was going on. (And believe me, I really hate when people say that, but I’m being fairly literal here–they were factually wrong on some things.) IMDB has it at 6.8, and I apparently gave it a 7. (The original post didn’t have a score from me, but I had entered one on IMDB.) (running time 1:39)