Surveillance

Director – Jennifer Lynch
Starring – Julia Ormond, Bill Pullman, Pell James

I have a sneaking suspicion that Surveillance’s director, Jennifer Lynch (David’s daughter), feels that her film has something very clever to say. I’m just not sure what it is.

Her last effort, 1993’s Boxing Helena, told the story of a surgeon who stalks a woman, kidnaps her and amputates all of her (mostly healthy) limbs, before she begins to fall for him. It was critically destroyed, flopped miserably at the box office and garnered a small, cultish group of fans with an interest in amputee fetishism. Considering this, and the 15-year gap between Helena and Surveillance, you could be forgiven for thinking that Lynch’s attitude to filmmaking may have changed a little – and you’d be right.

At least Boxing Helena had something genuinely unconventional and interesting about it. Surveillance, part Rashomon-style thriller, part Saw-style gore film, tells the story of a plethora of killings in the vast Santa Fe desert. The narrative is largely fragmented, with the murder witnesses (a drug addict, a bent cop and a young girl) recounting their versions of events to police officers while FBI agent Bill Pullman watches on via a trio of CCTV cameras. As time goes by, it becomes evident that “something is up”, until finally there is an earth-shattering twist that nobody could see coming and the film’s whole complexion is transformed.

At least, that’s what Lynch thinks. In truth, it is abundantly clear from the first 10 minutes of action that this is one of those films which will sacrifice anything – plot-lines, character believability, logic – in order to create the right conditions for a third-act payoff. Bill Pullman delivers one of the most grating, irritating and ridiculous performances of recent times. He twitches his head this way and that, smirks, stares and overacts his way through the mess, a figurehead for the awfulness of the picture.

Other members of the cast try their hardest to deliver decent performances, and although they largely fail, Pell James as Bobbi the druggie and Ryan Simpkins as the young girl deserve credit for creating one or two praiseworthy moments. And that really is saying something considering that this script contains such crisp cop/bad guy exchanges as: “Want a cigarette?” “No – smoking kills.” “No… You do.” Wow.

I had at least expected to find some intelligent insights into the dangers of the increasing amount of surveillance cameras that we allow to monitor our actions, but there are none. Even when the three witnesses recount their stories of the desert murders, a plot device ripe with dramatic possibilities concerning the subjectivity of truth and the reliability of evidence, Lynch cuts off the film’s creative oxygen supply with some very odd direction. We are shown snippets of conversation and action that are not related by any of the witnesses – so the flashback becomes objective and omniscient. Yet when the really ”interesting” things happen, the flashback conveniently becomes devious and starts to hide bits that it doesn’t want the audience to know about yet.

It can be enjoyable when a director uses tricky narrative techniques in order to dupe his audience (think The Usual Suspects), but Lynch just cheats in order to take her picture where she wants it to go. The farcical ending of this film, which is both shocking and funny (although the latter is unintentional, I’m sure), hardly begins to justify the preceding hour and a quarter of directorial tomfoolery. Lynch ends up with no clever message, no interesting things to say, and a pseudo-Tarantino finale that is dismally hollow. Maybe in another 15 years she’ll come up with something decent.

Verdict – Apparently Surveillance won awards at the New York City Horror Film Festival 2008. Let’s just say I’m glad I don’t have to watch the other entries.

No stars