Anamorph (DVD)

Perhaps the only thing worse than a bad movie is a bad movie that has so much going for it but can't live up to its promise. Anamorph has a fantastique premise, a great twist, and an amazing cast (Willem Dafoe heads it up, with costars Peter Stormare, Clea Duvall and Scott Speedman doing their best in thankless, paint-by-numbers roles).

Sorry to say, it's like watching oils dry in this so-called psychological thriller based on the concept of a serial killer inspired by anamorphosis (a artists' technique initiated by Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer Holbein, which manipulates perspective in order to create two competing images on a single canvas). It's high concept, but unfortunately, its uniqueness isn't quite enough to hold the viewer's interest. And surprisingly, the cinematography (by Fred Murphy, who worked with Dafoe before, on Paul Schrader's Auto Focus) is lackluster, dreary, and bland.

Dafoe plays a dour detective who's got a serious case of OCD — and the blues — after killing, in the line of duty, an abominable but artful serial killer called Uncle Eddie. When meticulously-arranged dead bodies begin turning up all over his district, Dafoe's dumbfounded… and obsessed with finding out whether these are the crimes of a copycat or if he might actually have punished the wrong man all those years ago.

As our gumshoe follows the clues, he interacts with a would-be sidekick in Speedman, a would-be love interest in Duvall, and a would-be buddy in Stormare… but none of it ever comes to fruition. I get the fact that Dafoe's supposed to be playing a lonely, bitter man on a quest, but the interpersonal relationships definitely needed more punch; it seems as though all the ancillary characters are simply there to spout dialogue and set the scene for another gruesome discovery.

It's difficult to bring the concept of painting to life on film — Argento almost got it right in The Stendhal Syndrome, while Hayek was spot-on with Frieda — but in this the case of Anamorph, it's like no one even bothered to bust out the broad brushes. In a word: Blah.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson