I saw APT PUPIL a loooonnnnggg time ago when I was judging a film festival in ATLANTA, it wasn’t part of the festival, but a tape and a person did find their way into my Atlantan room. Why haven’t I reported on it, why haven’t I reviewed it yet? Well, because I needed the spy to get more room, I had to let more hands touch the product, and now they have. Retracing the process would be tantamount to insanity, and the spy is very much invisible as nobody knows his/her connections to Atlanta.
I’ve met Bryan Singer at multiple functions. First a couple of years ago at the local AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL alongside Christopher McQuarrie before I had a site. Then at the Starship Troopers Premiere party, then again in Las Vegas at ShoWest. At all three meetings he impressed me as someone who knew what he was doing, that he wasn’t a hack.
Out of Singer’s Usual Suspects the aspects I was most impressed with was the music and the editing and how it wove the story tightly, neatly into a compact bat that beat you about the head and shoulders until you were senseless. That film was so tight, so wound up that it was a marvel to watch again and again. You felt yourself disappearing into the story, and you liked that. Keyser Soze was deliciously mysterious and evil, and we all, deep down, wanted to be that good at being evil. It was an audacious start, a film that just demanded to be followed up by an utter piece of shit, so that film people could scream out that Bryan Singer was a one trick pony, that it was a fluke, that he had sold out, etc etc. The typical trappings of success.
Well that ain’t gonna happen with this flick, or if it does it’s not really valid. This is very much the anti-Usual Suspects. While the that film had a big ensemble cast, this one doesn’t, while the first film had tons of settings, this one doesn’t. This film is so much smaller than the Usual Suspects, but it packs every bit the same wallop.
This is dark dark territory. This film will most likely work for a small segment of sick people like myself that just wonder from time to time what it would be like to converse with evil. To flirt with it. To sit like Clarice Starling and talk with a Lecter. To go into it thinking you are superior, that you are good and upright, but to find yourself being drawn closer and closer to the dark side of things.
Brad Renfro, I love this guy in the film. I’ve talked with some others that saw the film and some of them wanted him to have a fire in his eyes, to be everybit the mirror of Ian’s character, but to me.. to me this character as portrayed by Brad is pure evil. He’s that kid that doesn’t see any wrong, that is morally ambivalent, but that has no spark. This is a serial killer in the birth stage. A being that has no consideration for anyone but himself. Someone that see’s others as lessors. That believes there are stratas to human existence and that he is the crust. But in it all he has dark soulless eyes with no sense of revelation. To me this is a bad seed, not some over the top cartoon, not some child prodigy, but a rotten soul that decays all that it comes in contact with.
Then there is Ian McKellen. This man is so good, so right, so dead on that you fear him even though he is a fragile helpless old man. He’s that grandfather down the street that wears the same clothes that droop off him like unchanged sheets draped over retired furniture. He walks to the grocery store, he catches your city buses and he goes back into his creaking cave. He may sit in your malls, watching youth walk by, but there is a story to that old man sitting there. Sometimes it’s something like SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, a hero, someone that’s responsible for the way things are today, then sometimes, maybe never, but perhaps sometimes that old man sitting there is a serial killer, or a mass murderer or perhaps he’s something worse. Ian is something worse.
There is a scene that takes place on a back porch, you’ll know the scene when you see it. But in this scene you will grow cold, you’ll feel the hairs standing on the ends of your neck. You’ll be frightened. It’ll scare you, you’ll not want to look at old people, you won’t scream at them, you won’t do anything but say... open a door for them and manage a smile, then you’ll get a shiver. I forget who said it, but sometimes Old People are just scary. Why is that? Perhaps sometimes there’s a feeling that fear isn’t there, that they haven’t anything to lose, that they’ve lived they’re lives.
What about the other actors?
Well there really aren’t any. I mean David Schwimmer has a brief role, and Elias Koteas has a bit part, but really this film is between Ian and Brad. Any ink wasted on anyone else is exactly that.. wasted. This is they’re film. In a way the film reminds me of some of Hitchcock’s experimental films, where he tried to trap himself by shooting in one room, or trying to make a film with as few separate shots as possible. Here, you get that. You get that sense that Bryan was trying to get as far away from USUAL SUSPECTS as possible, but still not screw up.
He succeeded greatly. This film is creepy as hell, it’s a film to see by yourself on a lonely evening. It should be cold, you should have a coat on, and gloves. You should see your breath while watching this film. You should have a big bucket of popcorn that you eat kernal by kernal, chewing with your tongue, afraid of making a crunch sound.
Then you should walk home afterwards. You should find a dangerous pathway home, down uncharted streets, the lights should be out when you get home, and when the phone rings you should jump.
In otherwords, you should let this film get you, I can’t think that it won’t, but go with it. Let the film creep you out. It’s not a horror film, it’s a horrifying film. It makes you look at the kid shooting baskets in the driveway, and makes you wonder. You’ll be afraid of that kid, and you’ll be afraid of old men. And this is a good thing. Everyone needs to be afraid, it invigorates you, it breathes life into each breath you take. It quickens the heartbeat. This is one of my faves of the year.
Oh! For you King fans, know this. Singer has improved the ending of the story. Finally the title makes sense, it’s great. Chilling. Wonderful. Heh heh heh. You’ll see....
