Where Sleeping Dogs Lie

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.

"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.

This is a film that has you thinking about it later on for a few days. You can't seem to get it out of your mind. I found it absolutely enjoyable. The storyline and the acting is terrific. Suspenseful and intoxicating.

Sure, it's slow on action, but what atmosphere! I really enjoyed this movie the first time around, when I wasn't really paying attention, so I watched it a couple more times on cable. This was the first movie where I had really seen Tom Sizemore and known who he was, and he was absolutely chilling. I thought the interplay between Sizemore's menacing character and McDermott's kind of confused, innocent character was a lot of fun. Poor Dylan. He had no idea what he was getting into when he let that guy into his house, did he? I think the Sharon Stone sequences looked kind of tacked on - not that she didn't brighten up the screen - and I agree with other comments that the plot could have been tightened up, but overall I find it a haunting, very entertaining movie that should have gotten a lot more attention than it did at the time of its release. It didn't show up on cable until several years later. I liked it so much I picked up a copy on eBay and would highly recommend it to anyone who likes creepy suspense films.

This movie should have been great.

The acting is great. The locations are excellent, as is the photography, editing and so forth.

The premise is clever, the opening scenes of the script intriguing, and the actions of the characters logical given the circumstances. A few scenes are riveting, and the sequence of events, at least for the first half of the movie, captures your attention completely.

My feeling is that the film was cut, to the point where we are left with only the basic storyboard. The ending is questionable, probably because there are missing pieces of information.

Hopefully, the whole film was shot, and someone will go back and re-edit the final version someday. Or perhaps I am filling in a script that was not revised enough - who knows? But my gut feeling is that this film could have been quite extraordinary.