"Surveillance" a bonanza for the bloodthirsty
By Ray Bennett
CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - Jennifer Lynch's morbid thriller "Surveillance" begins with masked intruders killing people and the slaughter never stops.
It has been 15 years since David Lynch's daughter gave the world "Boxing Helena," but she hasn't lost her interest in minds that are seriously demented. The film premiered out of competition at Cannes.
Somewhere in the desert, two flamboyantly reckless killers are leaving a trail of dead bodies, including that of a local police officer. His colleagues are not best pleased when two assured FBI agents show up to interview three witnesses to the most recent carnage.
With a high splatter quotient and many scenes of deviant humiliation, the film will have its fans even if the eventual twist hardly comes as a surprise and probably isn't meant to. "Surveillance" will please the B-movie crowd in theaters and on into the ancillaries.
Police Capt. Billings (Michael Ironside) and his men are not happy at all when FBI agents Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond) and Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman) arrive to take over a case they are keen to solve. It doesn't help that for all their professionalism, the two feds appear to be very tightly wound.
Hallaway separates the three witnesses -- a female druggie (Pell James), a little girl (Ryan Simpkins) and a wounded police officer (co-scripter/producer Kent Harper) -- and watches them via camera as they relate the horrific incident on a deserted road in which five people were slain.
Each has a different take on what transpired, but the agents have reason to believe which ones are lying as the story unfolds in flashbacks.
The film looks great, with cinematographer Peter Wunstorf, using different stock and inventive angles to good effect, while Todd Bryanton's score helps maintain a constant undercurrent of dread. Lynch fills the screen with elements that some viewers of the film will want to go back to watch more than once, though not this one.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
