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    Raising Cain

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

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    “Raising Cain” is a thriller that’s so misguided in its direction that I’m not 100% sure if telling you about the premise is a spoiler or not. I’m going to say that it isn’t because there’s a casting choice early on that makes the “twist” incredibly obvious but I apologize in advance if for some reason you feel like I end up ruining the movie for you. Like I said, I don’t think this is spoiling anything when I tell you the movie is about a guy with multiple personality disorder that is kidnapping children for his father’s experiments. Ok, maybe that’s a big vague. Let’s back up. John Lithgow plays Carter Nix, a respected psychologist that is taking time off from his practice to help raise his daughter while his wife Jenny (Lolita Davidovich) keeps working. There’s something not quite right about Carter though. The attention he gives to his daughter borders on obsessive and when his “twin brother” suddenly appears outside of his car window, Cain reveals that the two have been working on a sinister plan fit for a mad genius. Their father, long-thought dead (also played by John Lithgow) is looking to collect children so that he can experiment the effects of abuse on their minds. He wants to kidnap children, traumatize them and study them afterwards, hoping to create examples of multiple personality disorder and document what his “research” uncovers. That’s a pretty crazy story, but what is really affecting Carter is Jenny’s old flame Jack (Steven Bauer) has suddenly re-entering her life. Her marriage vows are looking a lot less appealing now that this hunk has bumped into her and with this added stress, it’s enough to drive a man mad! While watching the movie, I was just confused. Is casting John Lithgow as multiple members of his family supposed to be done so that we think they’re real people, or are we supposed to think they’re hallucinations? If it was supposed to be a twist that he and his brother are in fact, the same person, why not cast other people in the role? There’s nothing about their relationship that makes them being “twins” necessary, so why this choice? Most thrillers dealing with imaginary friends, little voices in people’s heads telling them to go bananas or multiple personality disorders choose two different actors to play the roles in order to avoid suspicion. If it’s not supposed to be a twist, why do they play it as a big revelation that he’s a crazy person? There are some casting choices here and some revelations in the end of the film that support the idea that it’s supposed to be a twist and others that say it isn’t, making the movie very difficult to review without spoiling anything. Maybe that’s just me though. Maybe I’m a dummy and I just read somewhere that this movie was about a multiple personalities and just didn’t catch all of the red herrings, or maybe this movie was meant to be so obvious that it would throw people off. Even if that’s the case, the movie directed very strangely. There are multiple scenes where characters are shown doing some pretty extreme things that would shock the people they know and love, but then they turn out to be dreams. Then the next scene turns out to be a flashback, followed by another dream. There’s no way to determine what is what and who is sane in this movie so it just becomes confusing and annoying. If you watch the film, you will really question the behaviour of some characters. The police are particularly ineffective in this film and jump to all sorts of crazy conclusions when it’s convenient for a character to be captured, but when someone needs to escape or get away so that they can confront another character or make a dramatic entrance later in the film, the security becomes incredibly lax. There is a pretty cool escape sequence where Carter manages to sneak out of a building unnoticed, but even then he drops the ball by removing his shoes and just walking around barefoot. Yes he changed his clothes so no one would recognize him, but walking around without any protection for your toes? That’s just a bad move. Was he concerned that the police would recognize his footprints, but not his face? There are some minor plot holes you can point out too, but it’s not the little details that make this movie bad, it’s the overall story, the way it’s set up and particularly the casting. John Lithgow does a fine job, even when his role calls for some embarrassing stuff. Throughout the film, it just feels like something is wrong though. It feels like certain roles were chosen to be played by John Lithgow not because he suited the role, but because it would make for a “shocking reveal” later in the movie. It’s not his fault he’s in a mess of a film, it’s the casting director’s, and Brian De Palma’s for letting him/her get away with it. I realize I’m being overwhelmingly negative about the movie, but it really isn’t all that bad. It’s just profoundly misguided and overall not anything special. I can’t quite recommend it, though if you’ve seen it ahead of time and you want to really screw with your friends’ minds, watch this one back-to-back with a movie where a character has multiple personalities and it’s a genuine twist. Watch this one second and watch their brains deflate like a balloon out of confusion. It’s never boring, that’s something good to be said about it and there are some genuinely thrilling moments here too, but it’s just nothing you should rush out to see or will remember very well once it’s all over, except maybe for the last shot of the movie, which is particularly ridiculous. (On Dvd, January 19, 2014)

    5
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    adamwatchesmovies@  13.10.2014 age: 26-35 2,866 reviews

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