Surveillance (2008)

Studio: Magnolia/Magnet

Theatrical Release Date: June 26, 2009

VOD Release Date: May 29, 2009

Directed By: Jennifer Chambers Lynch

Cast: Bill Pullman, Julia Ormond, French Stewart, Kent Harper, Pell James, Ryan Simpkins

Review By: Marc Patterson

You might remember a devastating bit of horror cinema from 1993 called Boxing Helena.  The film was hurled into the Hollywood limelight as “the movie by the daughter of David Lynch”.  It just had to be good because the movie gods deemed it so.  Not so.  The scathing reviews were relentless and Boxing Helena was buried, a burnt effigy of fantastic failure.  The greatest contribution the film gave horror was inspiration for the seventeenth track of terror from The Misfits Famous Monsters album, and the unforgettable opening line of that song; “If I cut off your arms and I cut off your legs would you still love me anyway?”

Lynch returns to the spotlight with a new lease on life, though her newest effort reeks as a watered down tribute to her father’s past successes.  Surveillance is a rather nihilistic film set against a bleak and stark backdrop with wide open shots and despicable characters, none of which have a single redeeming quality.  Centered on a tumbleweed prairie-town full of corrupt cops, and no good drug dealers, our story is birthed on a highway of unrelenting pain and suffering. 

Bill Pullman and Julia Ormond headline as two FBI agents who have spent months on the trail of a pair of serial killers and don’t seem to have made much ground in tracking them down.  The killers are clearly still going strong, as evidenced in the grisly opening moments of the film.  Pullman and Ormond, as Agents Hallaway and Anderson, respectively, roll into the dusty town, butt heads with the local cops, and conduct interviews with three surviving members of the latest massacre by our faceless assailants, each with their own unique spin on what happened.  Tension mounts, if not slowly, to a violent conclusion. 

In spite of its predictable outcome which can be aptly spotted early on, there were some genuinely gut churning moments of tension filled violence, such as when the highway patrol officers accost random travelers on the road in a sadistic game born out of boredom.  However, the violence exhibited from our serial killers is of the faceless sort.  It comes unexplained, without motive, and without thought.  Even in Natural Born Killers Mickey and Mallory had motivation to their seemingly senseless barrage of violence. Lynch fails to take full advantage of the effect of violence to this thriller, rather utilizing it cheaply, like a cheeseball 80’s slasher.  It’s nothing but cheap effects to shock an audience back awake.  When it’s time for our patrol officers to receive their comeuppance the justice is downplayed and an audience which is cheering for bloody satisfaction, even if it comes from our masked killers, is ultimately let down. 

The bleak outlook that Surveillance will leave you with fails to be effectual as say Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. There’s no real sense of lingering emptiness. No thoughtful introspection. No remorse. No one in the film truly gets what’s coming to them. When the credits roll I wasn’t as numb as I was simply disaffected, which for a film coming from the Lynch family can be marked as a failure.  While this isn’t the overwhelming failure that marked Boxing Helena, it shouldn’t be counted as a masterpiece of horror.  Jennifer Lynch has a long way to go if she wishes to live up to her family name. 

Surveillance opens in theaters nationwide June 26.  It is available now through your limted cable on demand providers or through Amazon and X Box Live Marketplace.

Brutal As Hell Rating:

3 out of 5