Deadline Movie Review 114

Deadline is a thriller/horror starring Brittany Murphy and Thora Birch. It is directed by Sean McConville.

Alice(Murphy) is a novelist who lives in New York. She decides that she is going to go and stay at a friend's place for a week and try and write some of her book. She has had a hard time with her her ex-boyfriend who was sent to prison for hurting her and she has a had a breakdown. She has a deadline to meet, hence the title of the movie. She is driven to the house by her friend/lover, Becky(Tammy Blanchard) who seems to think that Alice would be better off staying in the city. They have a look around the house which turns out to be gigantic and spooky. Becky reluctantly goes back to New York, leaving Alice alone in the huge house.

Alice has her camcorder with her and she is filming the house. She finds out that her boyfriend, Ben is out of prison and that he was looking for her. She feels scared by this. She hears things moving in the house etc and she looks around but sees nothing. She goes up into the attic and comes upon a box full of camcorder cassettes. She plays these on her computer and she finds out that a couple used to live in the house. Lucy(Thora Birch) and her husband David(Marc Blucas) were the couple. Lucy is pregnant and David becomes more and more possessive as the tapes go on. He starts to lose the plot and he accuses her of having affairs etc. Alice begins to think that she sees Lucy in the house.

Alice coninutes to watch the tapes and it finally becomes apparent that David was going insane and Alice begins to become a bit unhinged herself. She thinks that she sees things and she thinks that she sees David and Lucy. In the end, she is almost killed by David, or is she? Her pal Becky comes back to the house and she finds Alice in the bathtub almost dead from hypothermia. She looks through Alice's camcorder tapes and she sees that Alice was filming HER while she was alseep....Oooh, the irony....

This movie was OK. It was nothing special and I found it a bit boring to be honest. It took too long to get moving and I just couldn't care less about the characters which is always a bad sign. It gets a 4/10.