Le cauchemar de Joanna

A promising subject from which to craft absorbing narrative design: an awareness of the existence of spatial dimensions parallel to our own, made more compelling by a widespread latter-day theory among physicists that the concept of time itself is a spurious construct, is treated here as merely an element for the production of a silly science fantasy story, having a weak merger of talent that condemns the film to failure from its onset. Any possible form of dramatic intent wants drive in this simple-minded tale based upon inferior material, an account telling of Joanna Burke (Sherilyn Fenn) who has ostensibly moved over into "the other side" after being mowed down by a semi-trailer truck as she is saving the life of her young daughter who is about to be flattened by the same vehicle. After awakening in a hospital, Joanna is informed that she is actually Sarah Randolph, whereas Joanna Burke and her daughter do not, in fact, exist, and it falls upon bewildered Joanna to solve this puzzle of her identity, a task for which she might not have competence, and exacerbated by Sarah's being of an unpleasant sort, perhaps to the point of having strangled her eight year old son to death. A romantic thread is unsurprisingly engendered when the physician treating Joanna/Sarah, played by Thomas Gibson, is determined to become involved with her predicament, and the two struggle along together, when not embracing or seeking to avoid close attention being paid to murder suspect Sarah by a zealous police detective who seemingly has only the Randolph homicide case assigned to him. Overly discursive plot development effaces any chance of suspense being constructed, particularly as to whether or not Joanna will be able to regain her former self along with her daughter, thereby creating only weak entertainment from a film that is further stricken by a glut of risible flaws in logic and continuity, not solely within the screenplay, but additionally relating to rather queer medical and law enforcement policies and procedures.

"Nightmare Street" is the first movie I have ever seen that has admitted to the existence of other probability timelines. The great quantum physicist Dr. Hugh Everett proved the existence of the probability timelines from Schrodinger's Equation.

Other movies have presented the false doctrine that if one went into the past one could do horrible harm to the future. Due to clashing quantum probability wave crests this would be impossible; rather, another probability timeline would be entered, and events would proceed normally from there.

Julian Barbour, in his "The End of Time", has shown that the furure is already there. There is just a big stochastic matrix where all the probability timelines possible are there, each probability timeline with its own root.

It is good to at last see a movie that admits to this, the "sixth dimension". What the "sixth"? Harvard University quantum physics professor, Dr. Lisa Randall, has already established that the direction of varying bent timespaces, with values of pi from zero to infinity, is the "fifth dimension".

Christian Theology calls this sixth dimension "kyros time". In it Judas both hung himself in the Gospels, and burst open from a fall in Aceldama in the Book of Acts on another probability timeline. It is good to see some honesty in the movie industry. Congratulations.

I found this to be rather trite and very bad acting on leading lady, Sherilyn Fenn, and her performance. It seemed odd to me that in every scene, including getting out of bed in the morning, that she had perfect make up on, perfect hair do. Throughout the movie she runs around with a frantic look on her face and no make up smudges, even her beauty mark in place. I felt bad for Thomas Gibson, who I like, and Steve Harris, the cop, who had to do scenes with her.

She was that bad. Can you imagine, in real life, what her pillow must have looked like with all that make up covering it?

I also felt the direction was pretty standard with not much offered to viewers. As to the ending, who knows what was real and unreal? To me, I didn't really care. I was hoping they'd lock her up. Again, LMN does their best to make women victors and men losers. But they pick the wrong actresses most of the time to do it.

Sherilyn Fenn of Twin Peaks fame plays the lead Joanna Burke in this riveting mystery/thriller by prolific director Colin Bucksey. In her quest for finding out what happened to her daughter and others around her after the accident, Joanna is befriended by - and then romantically involved with - Dr. Matt Westbrook who goes from trying to make her accept her new identity of Sarah Randolph to actually figuring out if there is a rational explanation to the situation.

"Nightmare Street" has a solid plot with great twists and a roller-coaster story arc. The writers - Margaret Tabor, Rama Laurie Stagner, and Dan Witt deserve praise for keeping it tight and engaging. Sherilyn Fenn is at her best and looks at the prime of her beauty. The TV movie has the classic come-full-circle ending. It's a good one to enjoy on any weekend.

Based on a theory of Einstein that there are different worlds in past, present and future this TV movie interested me. But even if the castings were satisfying i did not like the movie... The story could have made a great movie.