The Scribbler

  Now, if you know me, you know I like odd movies. Better than that, I love downright weird movies. Whether intentionally weird, or just fringe interests. You haven't lived until you've done a double-feature of Brazil and City of Lost Children. Just saying. I also happen to love psychological thrillers, movies based on comic books/graphic novels, and all that stuff. So The Scribbler looked like it was right up my alley. It took me a crazy long time to finally get around to watching it, but I did! The question now is, am I glad I did? I really don't know.

  The movie is about a young woman named Suki who suffers from dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) and has been subjected to a new treatment called the "Siamese Burn" which successfully 'burns' away some of the extra personalities. When she shows progress, she's put in a halfway home/apartment building called Juniper Towers, affectionately dubbed 'Jumper Towers' due to the incredibly high suicide rate. Anyhow, her doctor gives her a portable Burn Unit and prescribes a schedule on which to burn away the personalities. Suffice to say, between the cadre of other insane characters, and the unfolding mystery about Suki's personalities themselves, the movie gets crazy.

  It feels woefully unfocused though. The tone is a bit all over the place, does it want to be horror? A dark comedy? Sci-fi? A superhero story? Somehow it tries to be all of this, and instead of being a groundbreaking success, the movie fails to blend all these genres to any adequate end and instead we get a rather unfocused mess, albeit an ambitious one. Ambition always earns brownie points with me no matter the end result. Anyways, the movie is not without it's upsides. Actress Katie Cassidy is exceptionally watchable as Suki, making her manic enough to be fun in a dark way, and messed up enough for us to feel sorry for her. She grew on me.

  The rest of the cast is also really solid. Billy Campbell (The Rocketeer) plays Suki's doctor who's forced to languish between a half-hearted evil mad doctor vibe and a good-hearted but misguided physician. If he had been able to play up one of those angles to it's fullest, it would've been great. As it is, we're not sure what we're supposed to feel about him. He's reckless, but it seems at times his heart is in the right place. Or is it? He was a frustrating character who was ultimately too bland to make any sort of impact, but you can feel the potential he had and it's a bit sad it wasn't realized. Suki's mental case friends are all kind of neat, and they're all well played. Not too much to say there either unfortunately since they don't have much to actually do.

  In fact most of the movie plays out like a bad drug trip. Really, stuff happens... but not a lot of stuff really happens. The movie also tries to generate a big murder mystery, but it doesn't work. We're not quite sure what's going on until the very end of the movie, and at that point the climax is a super-powered fist fight on the roof of the building. I don't even know how we got to that point. I mean, plot-wise, yes... but it was incredibly out of left field. Which brings me to another complaint, not enough is explained about anything. How the hell did the doctor devise the Siamese Burn unit? We need to know more about it. And we need to know more about... just, everything. I feel like even though we got answers, they just led to more questions.

  The movie would have us believe that it's some strange origin story to a brand new superhero, but mostly it just feels like it's uncertain and should've just stuck to being punk-ish psychological drama. The sci-fi/superhero angle is just nuts. Not entirely bad or anything, just really nuts. Technically speaking, the movie is proficient in pretty much every aspect. There's some fantastically neat visuals. The acting is all well and good. The movie is unique. The score is good. But something is just off. The pieces don't gel well together. The movie is memorable, but not exactly good. In fact, the more I think about it... the more I think it was kind of a waste of time.

  I didn't really enjoy it, and I wouldn't watch it again. It was uncomfortable and ultimately pointless. Not that it wasn't well made, but it needed a lot more focus and more streamlined story. There were lots of inconsistencies and plot holes. And after a while I stopped caring about any of the characters. It was exhausting. Avoid it, if you're super curious... watch the trailer I guess. The movie was disappointing, which is sad because I was really looking forward to seeing it too. Ah well, can't win em all. Gotta press on!