The Scribbler

The ONLY reason I watched this is because I like Katie Cassidy, and I'll give anything she's in a chance, such as Supernatural, Harper's Island, Melrose Place, Arrow, Black Christmas, and Kill for Me. However, The Scribbler was a movie that - IMO - was not very good.

It's about a young woman, Suki (Katie Cassidy) who has multiple personalities. One of her personalities is attracted to the only man in the building. Yes, Katie has a rather lengthy topless sex scene. The place she's living is a halfway house for mentally and socially unstable people who are somewhat possible to rehabilitate. The place she resides is called Juniper Towers, but people call it Jumper Towers because some of the inhabitants tend to jump to their deaths. Suki is the prime suspect, and this movie begins with her being interrogated, which leads to the movie being a big flashback, with the sporadic jump to the present. It does have an interesting twist at the end, but having to sit through the rest of this movie to get to that twist is not a fun experience.

I can appreciate that the actors did a good job bringing these crazy characters to life, and they did a good job, but sitting through a movie where most of the characters are crazy is not fun. And the end made absolutely no sense.

Eliza Dushku plays Silk, a police detective, a forgettable character in the movie. Billy Campbell plays the doctor who signed off on Suki's release, but he visits her every now-and-then.

I gave this a 4-star rating. It might prove to be too high. :/

Suki (Katie Cassidy) is being interviewed by Criminal Psychologist Jennifer Silk (Eliza Dushku) and Police Detective Moss (Michael Imperioli). She recounts the events at Juniper Tower, an apartment building and halfway house for released mental patients. She suffers from multiple personalities and using The Siamese Burn to burn out the extra personalities. She reconnects with Hogan (Garret Dillahunt) who is sleeping with almost every beautiful lady in the building. Soon, these girls are dying from apparent suicides.

This world is surreal to the point of unreal. It's intriguing and unique, but I can't get over the unrealism of the premise. Whether it's Suki or the craziness of the world, it does come off as messy story telling. Although all of it can be excused as a way to inhabit the madness of the characters' minds. I'm with this movie until it loses me somewhat around the middle. I would like to keep some of these ideas and make the rest cleaner.

The movie starts out mysterious, trying to be a thriller. You'll see the main character (perfectly played by Arrow's Katie Cassidy), being a suspect in a murder case, who is also a mental patient. As a mental patient she lives in a building full of other mental patients who are too crazy to be credible, just as her head is inhabited by various personalities.

Obviously the movie wants you to wonder what kind of reality (or realities) you're in. While making you think, the movie transforms from a mysterious thriller into something more sci-fi / fantasy. This could be a good thing if it wasn't already well done by The Matrix, or Identity. As the movie transforms from mysterious to crazy and loses all credibility (yes, superpowers), somehow the lead characters succeed in becoming very interesting. Maybe the lead character isn't as crazy as we were meant to believe and her acting skills (together with her co-stars) make this movie watchable and fun, while all the puzzle pieces fall in their place.

My advice: don't watch this movie expecting something very complex, but it's good enough thanks to the actors who take their job seriously. The nod goes to Katie Cassidy. After disliking her in Arrow, she made me a believer. Thanks to her the movie is now a 6 instead of a 5.

I've read the Graphic Novel and watched this movie and both are poorly done despite having great potential. The movie suffers mainly from sparse, unnatural dialog that is also excruciatingly uninteresting plus an almost total lack of a thematic audio track; worse still, much of the dialog is annoyingly echoey. As far as the acting goes, the main character never makes herself believable as a crazy person; Eliza Dushku, as much as I loved her as Faith in Buffy, was totally miscast as a no-nonsense medical professional in this movie; Gina Gershon was entirely underutilized. Overall, I'd like to see this movie picked up by a better production team and made into the great movie it could be. Its main strength was its presentation of the disassociative personality disorder of the main character and her descent into madness and insanity. As it stands right now, I'd recommend the Graphic Novel over the movie mainly because it will take a lot less of your time.

I quite liked this. I think it could have done more with its premise, but as it is, it's pretty visually stunning and the performances are quite good. I've never thought Katie Cassidy had real talent, but she does some fine work here, always elevating the material when it needs it and providing a good contrast to the other roles she's played in the past. Dillahunt is a joy to watch, like always, and probably the MVP supporting player of the film. It's nice to see so many of these TV actors in roles in this (Buffy's Eliza Dushku and Michelle Trachtenberg, as well as The Sopranos' Michael Imperiori). I do recommend this, even if I get that it's pretty problematic