With The Shining, Misery and The Dark Half, King movies have played with the theme of writers in trouble. Secret Window examines this theme yet again as fiction-writer Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp) has some difficulties at his secluded cottage in upstate New York. Going through a divorce and prone to intense napping, Rainey is visited by a tall, menacing figure with a southern drawl named Shooter (John Turturro), and he's got a grievance.
Shooter insists that Rainey stole a story he wrote, and he leaves his manuscript on the porch to prove it. Word for word, the manuscript matches a story Rainey published a few years back--one that he emphatically believes is his own. A showdown begins as Shooter terrorizes Rainey, demanding that he give him story credit and change the ending back to the one Shooter intended. The bodies of neighbors and pets pile up, and we're supposed to buy the notion that Shooter is the man responsible.
King and director David Koepp have a little fun with the idea of plagiarism and the notion that an author could rip someone off and not even know it. The film is actually pretty sturdy when it deals with this portion of its plot, but it goes off track as overly familiar King themes become prominently featured. As with The Dark Half, the film deals with the duality of a writer (in simple terms, the good side and the bad side), and as more aspects of Rainey's psyche become revealed, it becomes obvious that the movie is nothing but a thinly disguised rehash of Half.
Many viewers who have read King will know that something other than the tremendously obvious is afoot. Turturro, although an interesting enough character, will most certainly turn out to be more than a nasty southerner looking for payback.
Those who go to the film anticipating the fact that the movie is not as clever as it thinks it is might get enough enjoyment out of Depp's reliably eccentric performance. Decked out in thick glasses and his trademark messy hair, he's convincing as a tortured artist going through the death of a relationship. An instant in which the usually grim Rainey shows up happy as heck, teeth adorned with a new set of braces, is quintessential Depp. Until the film really goes off the tracks in its final quarter, Depp keeps things floating.
Turturro's Shooter got on my nerves for all the wrong reasons. I found the character too typical, the sort of one-dimensional joke that plagues King's lesser works. Maria Bello isn't asked to do much as Rainey's soon-to-be ex-wife, but she does fine with the little she's given. Timothy Hutton is cast as her lover--not a great idea, since he starred in the similar and not-so-good The Dark Half.
It's funny that the film deals with plagiarism, considering that it actually feels as if King ripped himself off. Maybe that's supposed to be part of the joke. Regardless, Secret Window doesn't work as a thriller, because it has no real element of surprise. Depp fans will have plenty to chew on, but they might find themselves wondering why their hero chose to participate in such routine swill.
