Close Your Eyes--A Sterling Example of British Mystery

Close Your Eyes

DVD

***

Directed by

Nick Willing

Written by

Nick Willing

William Brookfield

Cast

Goran Visnjic .... Dr. Michael Strother

Paddy Considine .... Elliot Spruggs

Shirley Henderson .... Janet Losey

Miranda Otto .... Clara Strother

Corin Redgrave .... Chief Inspector Clements

Claire Rushbrook .... Grace

Fiona Shaw .... Prof. Catherine Lebourg

Josh Richards .... Keith

Sarah Woodward .... Police Inspector Hilary Ash

Andrew Woodall .... Lebourg's Son

Lauren Gabrielle Volpert .... Martha Strother

John Bett .... Nursing Home Doctor

Steve Nye .... Young Boy 1

Joshua McGowan .... Young Boy 2

Angus Wright .... Bicycle Man

R

103 mins

First off, this week I am still brought to you by Cassava Films, whose truly impressive "Serial Slayer" is on InDemand Pay Per View through May 25. Go here http://www.cassavafilms.com/vod1.html or pester your cable company for details.

The British have been the undisputed masters of the mystery genre for better

than the last hundred years. And this massive legacy shows forth cleanly and

fitly with Close Your Eyes, a fantastically subtle, if slightly flawed, murder

mystery straight out of Great Britain.

So, what we have here is the story of a hypnotherapist who sees more than he'd like to. Dr. Michael Strother has the capacity to see the inside of his patients' minds. Naturally, you'd think this would be an incredible boon to the whole concept of psychology ("Hey, I see what the problem is! You're a closet kleptomaniac! That'll be two hundred fifty dollars--next patient!"), and you know the HMOs would love a therapist who could perform diagnoses on the fly like that.

And Strother puts his gift to work, helping a detective who wants to quit

smoking. Standard operating procedure, right? Well, you'd be absolutely

right...until Strother gets a disturbing vision involving a child floating

underneath a stream.

Seems Strother's patient is chasing after a serial killer who favors occultic

signs and behaviors, and the girl in Strother's vision was one of the victims.

The girl's name is Heather, and she's the sole survivor of our serial killer.

She also hasn't spoken a word since.

Which means it's time for Strother to step in and help out with the

investigation, which he of course does, with shocking results.

The part that really amazes me about Close Your Eyes is that it's a British

film. Close Your Eyes comes to us from the BBC's fiction arm, BBC Films. Now, if you're familiar with British works, you know they practically invented the locked-room mystery, along with any of a dozen others. The Brits gave us Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and hordes of others.

That's an enormous onus put on the boys and girls at BBC Films to produce an incredible piece of suspense work, and they do seem up to the task. Check out the incredible visual work at the five minute mark--the waterfall and the forest are done entirely by CG, and its a thing of beauty. Even the changeovers are amazingly done--the differences between the scenes are so seamless and of such high quality, it's unfathomable.

Close Your Eyes also manages to ramp up some incredibly suspenseful sequences. It fully lives up to the massive legacy that English mystery has spawned.

Close Your Eyes suffers in one major regard--the frequent appearances of various occultic symbols. I know, I know; they're an important part of the plot. But the concept in general has been so badly overused that the standard occultic symbology has become unnecessary. Other means could have been used--the invention of unique symbols referred to as occultic would have sufficed.

The ending is a real surprise, an excellent thrilling ending to the preceding

built-up suspense. Plus, there's an incredible twist that must be seen to be

believed.

The special features include cast and crew interviews, a behind the scenes

featurette, a theatrical trailer (this was in European theatres for quite some

time) and trailers for "Pulse," "Mayor of the Sunset Strip," "Stateside,"

"September Tapes," and "Unsolved Mysteries." The "Unsolved Mysteries" trailer isn't for a movie, but rather for the various DVD box sets of the old NBC series, offering themed sets "Ghosts," "UFOs," and later, "Miracles."

All in all, Close Your Eyes is a worthy addition to the pantheon of British

mystery titles. Though it suffers from the unnecessary addition of occultic

symbols, it is still a suspenseful, thrilling masterwork.

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