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ANAMORPH
Directed by H. S. Miller
Produced by Marissa McMahon
Written by Miller & Tom Phelan
Director of Photography, Fred Murphy
Edited by Geraud Brisson
Music by Reinhold Heil & Johnny Klimek
Released by IFC Films
USA. 103 min. Rated R
With Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman, Clea Duvall, James Rebhorn, Peter Stormare, Amy Carlson, Yul Vásquez, Don Harvey, Deborah Harry, & Mick Foley

Detective Stan Aubray (Willem Dafoe) has been haunted by the outcome of the Uncle Eddie serial killer investigation five years earlier. He now teaches criminology, but is brought back to a puzzling crime scene where a camera obscura leads to the body – the killer has set up his “portrait” of an upside-down corpse, projected by light through a tiny hole in a wall. The killer believes the murder is, apparently, a work of art, designed and executed in pathological detail.

This leads Aubrey, the kind of detective who repeatedly sneaks sips from little bottles of liquor, to a series of murders, all done as if by a copycat killer, and each inspired by the likes of Francis Bacon. However, clues link the killings to the Uncle Eddie case. Soon enough, Aubray and Sandy (Clea Duvall), a girl from his past, are targets of the killer, but can he find the key to the anamorphosis (the means to see something in a whole other perspective than what’s been initially revealed) and unlock the clues before it’s too late?

If this plot sounds a little familiar, it is. The filmmaker, first-time feature director H. S. Miller, has created a work that is basically a knockoff of the kinds of films that one saw coming out in spades following Se7en, and consequently now feels like a two-hour CSI episode featuring special guest stars (walk-on parts from Deborah Harry as Stan’s neighbor and ex-WWF wrestler Mick Foley as an antique dealer). Whenever the film goes into flashback mode, we get a tint that looks, frankly, urine colored and as if two negatives were spliced together.

This might have been innovative a decade ago, but is now old hat. The anamorphosis angle comes into focus only until the final reel and would have been interesting if the filmmakers didn’t try so hard to be arty. We are never given much of a reason why the Uncle Eddie case really affected Aubray as it apparently has, so the movie’s mostly just exposition with the occasional grisly image, albeit somewhat chilling (a murder scene with body parts hung all over the place).

So despite the efforts of the filmmakers, according to the press notes, to make this a throwback to classic 1970’s American films and (I chuckled at this) Jean-Pierre Melville’s police thrillers, it’s not a good movie. If there is any reason to see it, perhaps really late on TV, it’s Dafoe. He’s always an actor with something to offer, be it his conflicted compassion as The Last Temptation of Christ’s Jesus or performing a delirious Riverdance at a crime scene in The Boondock Saints. Here he makes Aubray subtle at just the appropriate points and conveys tension and conflict without overplaying it. If he had better material to work with, the role might even have been one of his best in recent memory. As it is, he makes the movie partially watchable, at best. Jack Gattanella
April 18, 2008