Twisted isn’t twisted enough

“Twisted”

Directed by Philip Kaufman

Starring

Ashley Judd

Andy Garcia

Rated R

97 Minutes

Grade D

In this day and age, pretty decent crime shows are on television 24-7, and thus any movie that claims to be a suspense/murder mystery must live up to the audience’s heightened expectations. The audience is well trained to watch this genre of film and/or television, and it is therefore a difficult task to create something new and original. It is truly disturbing that movie producers and makers believe that the unintelligent, formulaic excuse for a mystery that “Twisted” is should be made.

“Twisted” is by far unworthy of the all-star cast it harbors, or more correctly, exploits. It’s a thriller without thrills, a suspense drama with a weak resolution, and a shameful reminder that Hollywood foots the bill of such pathetic films. Maybe it should have been named “Disturbing,” not because it evokes this emotion in the audience but simply because of the almost unbelievable stupidity of everything it attempts.

The premise places Jessica Shepard, (Ashley Judd) in a potentially interesting situation. Recently promoted to the homicide division, Shepard, a former cop, investigates a serial murderer only to find that the only connection between the corpses is the fact that she has slept with them.

This is more than a coincidence; someone is out to prove a point, or worse … Shepard, in a state of unconsciousness, is killing these men herself.

The plot progresses with knowledge that Shepard’s father, also a police officer, was a serial killer himself. When Jessica was young, her father killed several men then took his and Jessica’s mother’s lives. Jessica was then raised by her father’s partner John Mills (Samuel L. Jackson).

The chance that Jessica could in fact be the very serial killer she seeks, killing in a somnambulant state is rather interesting. However, the interest dwindles soon after the possibility is entertained for a few scenes of Shepard passing out drunk.

One thing that the audience knows after watching night after night of “NYPD Blue” or “Murder She Wrote” is that the most obvious possibility of the killer can almost automatically be ruled out. The writer will try to deceive the audience by sloppily pointing a finger at a likely source, but this likely source is usually too likely to be true.

The difficulty in writing a “whodunit” thriller resides in the fact that the audience has to be surprised by the identity of the killer. Surprising an audience while maintaining a degree of plausibility is a more difficult task than one might imagine.

Unfortunately for “Twisted” the revelatory ending is weakened by a huge surprise degraded by its lack of plausibility.

What constitutes plausibility? With some rare exceptions, the outcome of a thriller is dependent on the screenwriter’s choices. The director will only on occasion develop an ending entirely separate from that which the screenwriter creates. How can a writer be sure that the audience will entrust him/her to reveal the “correct” killer’s identity? How can there be a “correct” choice of a killer in a fictional tale?

There are definitely certain rules that a writer can be held accountable for when choosing his or her killer. These rules have and can be broken, but when the writer or director is a newcomer to the Hollywood scene (as is screenwriter Sarah Thorp) these rules might be abided by, or broken with care.

Perhaps the most important rule when choosing a killer is balancing the obvious with the not so obvious. In other words, the killer should be someone who the audience knows well enough to determine that this person couldn’t be the killer. Then when this person indeed turns out to be the killer, the audience is surprised.

Simply put, the killer in “Twisted” is someone who doesn’t receive enough screen time, and the audience won’t care that he is the killer because they don’t feel like they knew him throughout the two hours they spent with Ashley Judd and Andy Garcia. The character’s lack of involvement in the main series of events that occur up until the final blow out – where his/her character finally gets the screen time he deserves – is minimal and forced.