You may not have heard of this film... and there's a reason for that. It's pretty hard to sit through, not because as a thriller it is scary, but because the whole thing seems a bit of a muddle where logic has to be forgotten from the beginning.
Singer John Mellencamp plays a tormented crime photographer obsessed with the pictures he takes of murder victims. [Mellencamp registers only one facial reaction throughout the film, so we have to infer what he is feeling by his vocal range.]
From the beginning we know he is being stalked by a guy in a red baseball cap. Why we don't know until about mid-way through the film. The stalker is creepy, but unfortunately looks like a sibling of Will Ferrell.
Mellencamp befriends a female deaf mute [Terrylene], a friend of his aunt. She lives in a church rectory and acts as sacristan. Since she cannot speak, she speaks only in sign language. Some you can figure out, much means little to those who don't sign language. Mellencamp communicates with her using sign language and some dialog. Needless to say, their scenes together don't always help the viewer. Terrylene's character is also clairvoyant and sees murders and the murderer. She is called on several times to do nude scenes which don't seem to have much purpose other than show her body.
Louise Fletcher plays Mellencamp's aunt, a minor, rather thankless role. There's a side story about Mellencamp's emotionally damaged brother, but it doesn't add a lot of depth to the story except to have a second creepy character as a foil to the baseball-cap guy.
Suspense should be the focus of this kind of film, but there are few surprises and little to recommend it.
After Image (2001) * (To paraphrase a friend, "This is 92 minutes of my life I'll never get back.") The film is on Hulu Plus or Amazon instant.
Trailer here
Singer John Mellencamp plays a tormented crime photographer obsessed with the pictures he takes of murder victims. [Mellencamp registers only one facial reaction throughout the film, so we have to infer what he is feeling by his vocal range.]
From the beginning we know he is being stalked by a guy in a red baseball cap. Why we don't know until about mid-way through the film. The stalker is creepy, but unfortunately looks like a sibling of Will Ferrell.
Mellencamp befriends a female deaf mute [Terrylene], a friend of his aunt. She lives in a church rectory and acts as sacristan. Since she cannot speak, she speaks only in sign language. Some you can figure out, much means little to those who don't sign language. Mellencamp communicates with her using sign language and some dialog. Needless to say, their scenes together don't always help the viewer. Terrylene's character is also clairvoyant and sees murders and the murderer. She is called on several times to do nude scenes which don't seem to have much purpose other than show her body.
Louise Fletcher plays Mellencamp's aunt, a minor, rather thankless role. There's a side story about Mellencamp's emotionally damaged brother, but it doesn't add a lot of depth to the story except to have a second creepy character as a foil to the baseball-cap guy.
Suspense should be the focus of this kind of film, but there are few surprises and little to recommend it.
After Image (2001) * (To paraphrase a friend, "This is 92 minutes of my life I'll never get back.") The film is on Hulu Plus or Amazon instant.
Trailer here
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