Compulsion

I see why it gets bad reviews as this aims to a very limited audience. If you thought this was going to be a fun and wacky chick flick with traditionally sympathetic characters, you were horribly, horribly wrong.

Everything but the script is damn near perfect, and the script is not terrible either. Not fantastic, but hand in hand with the good acting, fitting soundtrack and beautiful cinematography; it's a very enjoyable film.

IF you're the target audience.

If you're looking for something that dares be different from the rest of the lot, this movie is for you! Also, Joe Mantegna plays a detective in this. If you're a Criminal Minds fan you could watch it just to get a kick out of thinking of it as a crossover between this film and CM.

The story of two disturbed women whose lives end up intertwining. Or to be precise, one obsessive and possibly delusional woman and another who simply has had a hard life. When the psychotic of the two, Amy, develops a fascination with her reclusive neighbour, Saffron, she shows it through trying to push her love of food on to her. What follows is a rather bizarre but intriguing series of events.

A great aspect of this film is that I believe it's open to interpretation. Amy clearly doesn't have the tightest grip on reality, in fact we are often shown glimpses into her head where an imaginary audience is cheering her on. Combine this with the plot and characters going in the strangest of directions and the sceptical comments of a particular other character and the film raises the question of how much of it is in Amy's head and how much of it is simply events going in such a unique way.

Admittedly, this film is probably a bit of an acquired taste(ha, get it). It's labelled a thriller, which is partly true but the vast majority of it is a character study. If you like analysing the mindsets of flawed characters, this film is for you. Worth re-watching if you want to look at things from a different angle.

We watched it last night, and honestly, it wasn't that bad. I've seen a lot worse. The premise was a bit weak, the acting was average, and the story was transparent. It was almost like a characterture of what the real movie would have been. It hard to explain, but everything was over done, colours, costumes, scenery, acting, basically everything. That is what gave it a "pass" to be a mediocre movie. You can get away with it, because it's supposed to be campy.

I would recommend a rental if you want zombie out in front of the TV for 88 minutes. It's mildly entertaining and the two female leads are pretty enough to keep you interested.

The production was fine. The quality edit, colour correction, lighting correction and so on was done well.

A lot of people worked hard to make this film, so I applaud them for it. Nice work, decent product and no time wasted in production.

It's not a compelling movie, but it's a movie. A simple, nice, different kind of film. Recommended when you want to do nothing.

First of all, let me just start out by saying that this movie is slow, unbelievably slow. And the 88 minutes that the movie ran for seemed much, much longer.

The story told in "Compulsion" had its moments, but it was overall weighed down by things taking too long. There were so many scenes that just dragged on for way too long, where the movie would have benefited from a trim and a notch up in pace.

"Compulsion" is about Amy (played by Heather Graham) who is obsessed about gourmet cooking and dreaming about getting her own cooking show on TV. All she cares about is her cooking and her food, desperately seeking approval in her cooking from her boyfriend/husband (?) Fred (played by Kevin Dillon). However, her compulsive obsession drives him away, and instead she starts to cook for her reclusive neighbor Saffron (played by Carrie-Anne Moss).

It should be said that the people in the movie were doing good jobs in acting, however, the characters were really odd. And I personally didn't really find much enjoyment in these characters, because they were all a bit too eccentric and out there. But thumbs up to the actors and actresses, because they did good jobs.

This slow paced thriller might not be suitable for just anyone, and I was tempted to get up and find something else to watch a couple of times throughout the 88 (long) minutes. But I stuck with it to the end, hoping that there might just be a change for the better just around the corner. But that was not to be...

I am rating "Compulsion" a mere 3 out of 10 stars, simply because the actors and actresses held the movie afloat, the rest of the movie - especially the storyline itself - was just downright boring and tedious.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this movie. I was exhausted from work and felt like watching a predictable horror movie. This is not at all a thriller or a horror movie. It is actually an interesting buddy film between two damaged women who crave what they can't have--love. One tries to find fulfillment through cooking and baking and serving gourmet meals, compulsively nurturing, and another who is desperate for a nurturer, a bulimic who is unable to eat. It is visually very interesting. Amy (Heather Graham, whom I thought was fantastic)and her TV dreams are reminiscent of Nicole Kidman and TO DIE FOR; the bright colors of her dress against the sterile white fake TV set contrast with dark, dreary tones of her idol and then friend Saffron (Moss). I really enjoyed the lush, gorgeous meals Amy created, at first trying to woo Saffron as a friend and then, sensing Saffron's despondency and loneliness much like her own, attempting to sustain her through food and create some kind of sensuous joy for her. The ending makes this a black comedy, if one needs to label it. The writing is clunky and personally I would have enjoyed seeing a couple more scenes showing development of this friendship but filling in the blanks is fun, too.