Nightmare Street

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.

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.

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.

*********S P O I L E R S**************

This movie was so predictable that I figured out the mystery within seconds. Actually any one who has seen The Wizard of Oz will figure it out quickly. A woman named Joanna Burke played by Sherilyn Fenn has an accident while on an outing with her daughter. When she awakens, she is told she is someone else, Sarah Randolph. Sarah Randolph turns out to be a murderer and of her own son. The biggest giveaway comes when she returns to her neighborhood on a couple of occasions. Neither the mailman nor the newstand salesman recognizes her. So I took a weak guess and it turned out to be the right guess. I said a weak guess because I was hoping the writers of this story wouldn't settle for a hackneyed storyline. Silly me.

To make matters worse, the story goes on and on as if to say, "We Know You Know The Ending -- But You'll Never Guess How We're Going To Get To It" This movie should have ended an hour earlier. It's a typical tv movie of the week with the usual one dimensional characters that fails to show the dramatic range of a good supportive cast: Steve Harris, Rena Sofer, and Thomas Gibson. If this had been a dramatic short, at least the viewer could have been spared.

"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.