October 18th

Spiral (2007) directed by Adam Green & Joel David Moore

Mega-Spoilers: The final movie in my unofficial Adam Green-a-thon this year.  Though, I'd venture a guess this was more of co-director / co-writer / star Moore's film than Green's.  There's absolutely no gore, little blood, and no references to bodily functions to be found here.  Instead, we follow the disturbed, shy, Asperger-suffering Mason, who's passions in life are jazz records and painting portraits of lady friends.  But, what of these ladies he paints?  It's a twist!

So, when bubbly, pretty, impossibly friendly Amber begins to persistently talk to Mason, I knew something was up.  In movies, this is the geek equivalent of the cliche fat slob with a hot wife on a TV show: it doesn't really happen in reality.  After that, it's easy to notice that Green and Moore go out of their way not to show Amber interacting with anyone but Mason and not to have anyone but Mason reacting to her.  She's pretty much Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense.  But: a twist!

I actually didn't see the twist coming at all, but, unlike later Shyamalan films, I didn't feel cheated by it.  Turns out that Amber is really real.  Whereas in the past Mason would paint and kill imaginary girlfriends -- re-living a murder he witnessed (his mother's?) -- this time he does the same to a real woman.  When his boss/friend Berkeley finally reveals to him none of his girlfriends were real, a confused Mason asks "How can you tell the difference?"  Upon learning that a woman named Amber hasn't showed up for work that day, Berkeley then realizes the seriousness of his silence on the subject.  Might want to take your friend's mental illness more seriously next time, eh?

A pretty neat reversal of your typical twist ending movie.  I also dig that the horror at the end of this film belongs not to final girl or the disturbed main character, but to the previously carefree secondary character of Berkeley.

Watched: DVD from Anchor Bay.