Where Sleeping Dogs Lie

My review was written in November 1991 after watching the movie at a Manhattan screening room.

A clash of two dissimilar personalities is examined with mixed success in the thriller "Where Sleeping Dogs Lie". Restrained approach compared to recent films like "Cape Fear" spells modest box office success.

Dylan McDermott portrays an unsuccessful writer in Hollywood who's frustrated by the commercial need to write blood-and-guts stories. His agent Sharon Stone puts on the pressure and he decides to write a detailed novel about a mass killer.

McDermott has just been evicted from his flat and moves into the creepy old mansion his day job real estate boss (Ron Karaatsos) has ordered him to sell. Gimmick is that he uses the house for inspiration, basing his novel on a notorious murder case that took place there.

Before the film can turn into a haunted house suspenser, Tom Sizemore shows up as a twitchy boarder. McDermott is mean to him, flauntging an air of superiority, but before long the tables are turned.

Director Charles Finch (son of the late actor Peter Finch) and his mother, co-scripter Yolande Turner, get good mileage from the insidious relationship of the Joseph Losey/Harold Pinter classic "The Servant".

Film requires a great deal of audience willingness to go along with several far-fetched plot twists notably in McDermott's character. However, both leads' good acting makes it worth the effort, leadking to its unsettling ending.

McDermott is properly macho and overbearing in the interesting departure from his previou straight-arrow roles ("The Blue Iguana", "Hardware"). Sizemore makes a strong impression as the unctuous worm who turns.

Stone ("Basic Instinct") is perfect in a small role as the bitchy agent. Est of the cat has a mere walk-on in a film that reportedly was heavily trimmed to reach its current release version. Result Is a vignette structure with little continuity between individual scenes.

Hans Zimmer and Mark Mancina's melodramatic score does a great job of setting and maintaining the creepy atmosphere.

The script telegraphs all of its "surprises", the direction is strictly by-the-numbers and Dylan McDermott is a bland lead. There are only two noteworthy elements in this movie: the dangerous, edgy intensity Tom Sizemore brings to his role, and a couple of steamy moments provided by Sharon Stone, who was then at her best-looking phase; at one point she actually says to McDermott: "Don't fret, you 'll get the check in a week and you can have me now". Now that's what I call a GOOD DEAL. (**)

I was left waiting, and waiting... and waiting. "Where Sleepig Dogs Lie" is a sleepy, and cold-hearted psychological thriller with a lot converstational pieces and reflective posturing which doesn't go anywhere with it all. Dylan McDermott plays a struggling writer Bruce Simmons who moonlights as a real estate agent to earn some cash, yet he moves into the house he's meant to be selling after finding himself homeless. There he accidently uncovers the house's dark history - the previous tennants were brutally slaughtered by a murderer who was never caught. So there becomes the basis of his next novel... without realising what he's really getting into. Also a stranger (Tom Sizemore) arrives on the scene asking if he could rent out a room, and Bruce obliges. However in doing so, he might dig up a past best left alone.

So the premise had me hooked, just the execution left me lukewarm. The thing is, it was predictable and you could see the twists in the story coming. So you're just waiting for the thrills and spills to make up for its uneventul progression, but they never eventuate in spite of the dangerous predictament evolving. Which makes it rather boring because you're waiting for McDermott's character to figure it out and when he eventully does (takes him long enough) you'll think suspense would be at boiling point, yet its simply flatlines and rushes through its anticlimax.

It's disappointing, because I liked Sizemore's jittery performance. He grows particularly unnerving as film goes along, and it really does faulter when he isn't on screen becuase he is the most fascinating character. Forseeable traits, yet the chemistry between McDermott and Sizemore's characters is what the plot hangs off. Details upon details lead to uncomfortable and factured truths, and two minds are presumably after one end. Its just can you live with the consequences. And the final few minutes paint it perfectly. It's just the journey to that point was too straightforward that it lacked the ups and downs to keep me fully invested.

"Where Sleeping Dogs Lie" would have been a much better film had the director and writer tightened the screen play in which it's based. Charles Finch, the director, and Yolanda Turner, the writer, tried to put some life into the film with mixed results.

The story of Bruce, a writer that is house sitting a mansion that has seen better days, offers a lot of possibilities. Bruce made the discovery about a murder that has taken place in the house. To make matters worse, he agrees into taking a lodger, the creepy Eddie Hale. The viewer realizes right away where the story is going. The result is an uneven movie that has some good elements and with another creative team it might have been more interesting.

Dylan McDermott is Bruce, the writer. Tom Sizemore has more opportunity playing the strange Eddie Hale, who is the key to the mystery surrounding the mansion and what happened in it years ago. Sharon Stone is seen as a literary agent that wants to dare Bruce into producing a masterpiece.

"Where Sleeping Dogs Lie" is a curiosity piece that is mildly engrossing.

WHERE SLEEPING DOGS LIE is one of the least well known of the psycho thrillers that filled cinema screens in the early 1990s. The reasons for this obscurity become obvious when you start watching, because this is poor stuff indeed; it commits the cardinal sin of a thriller in that it's thoroughly boring, with hardly any incident or indeed mystery to keep it going.

The story is about a young writer (AMERICAN HORROR STORY's Dylan McDermott) who moves into a supposedly haunted old mansion and befriends a drifter (Tom Sizemore) who comes to stay. Sizemore can usually be relied upon to deliver interesting performances, and indeed is the most interesting thing about this movie, but sadly the calibre of the writing is so poor that this is near-unwatchable for the most part.

In an attempt to capitalise on current trends and popularity, Sharon Stone (BASIC INSTINCT) appears in the rather extraneous role of the writer's literary agent, although her appearance only serves to add some minor titillation and lots of dull, talky scenes which pad out this never-ending thriller that lacks both thrills and suspense.