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Let's think how to put together the all-star team of menace.

We'd have Paul Shrader direct, and he'd never shoot a centered, straight-on angle. The movie would be filled with nearly empty frames, where the actors can be seen only far off to the side, and the scenes would begin with tracking shots through an alley to the characters, as if from a stalker's P.O.V. Doors and windows would open and close near our protagonists, manipulated by unseen hands, for unspoken reasons.

We'd have Harold Pinter write the screenplay, and every line would be pregnant with vague menace. The character's actions would be filled with unexplainable and unexplained malice. People would repeat with gravitas lines that don't seem important. People would tell awful stories about their youth and their excessively stern parents.

We'd locate it in Venice at night, where every corner seems to turn into a deserted and foggy dead end, every street is a waterfront, and there are as many ghosts and echoes as living people.

We'd star Christopher Walken.

Sorry, guys, it's already been done. This is a spooky, creepy movie, well presented by the all-star team. I really found only one flaw. The menace was not left unspoken and threatening. The movie ends with people doing explicit and unspeakably awful things for no reason.

It's one strange movie. Great use of Venice as the backdrop for the story. It is a masterpiece in its own Euro-noir genre. I liked it a lot, but don't expect a typical cinema experience, or a happy ending.

This is the second Harold Pinter film I have seen during the Harold Pinter film festival being held at Lincoln Center in New York. I think his adaptations are great. Paul Schrader's direction in this movie was wonderful. The long shots and thoughtful portrayal of the surroundings added immensely to the overall beauty and cleverness of the film. You need to be able to get a sense of the place where the movie takes place. I believe Schrader captured Venice perfectly. When I traveled in Italy, the only place I ever felt uneasy was walking through Venice at night. Walken is a genius, regardless of what people say about him. He has the same stage presence as a Brando, Dean or Steiger. He embodies his character. I would recommend anyone to see this film and am encouraging my 30 yr old son who is an aspiring actor to see it and learn from the masters!

The best way to approach Paul Schrader's stylish but unsettling new film is without any knowledge of the (admittedly slim) plot, involving two innocents abroad and their fateful encounter in decadent Venice with a local couple whose Old World manners hide a malignant obsession. This isn't the romantic Venice of many a travel guide, but a dark and ominous maze of Byzantine alleys and dead end streets, and Schrader gives the city a wonderfully rich and gritty sense of after-hours entropy. Harold Pinter's screenplay is likewise (and typically) indirect, but the combination of an incredibly dense and evocative mood with the author's teasing lack of narrative helps to create a feeling of almost unspeakable dread. The film is certainly an acquired taste: perverse and pretentious in the old-fashioned European art house tradition (and, at times, oddly and inappropriately comic), but the effect can be disturbing to viewers caught in the right frame of mind.

I could not help but thinking of the old children's story of Hansel and Gretel. This time, Hansel and Gretel are grown up and get lost in Venice - the witch - being played chillingly by Christopher Walken as "Robert" - a rather strange man who lures the couple to dine with him and then later to stay at his house. You will notice that Robert always has one hand in his pocket. Very mysterious and wicked.

So much is written in Hollywood about a character's ‘redemptive arc'-it is rare that anything redemptive crosses our path in a Paul Schrader movie, and we wouldn't want it any other way.

Let's talk about real life, life ala Schrader and Pinter---rarely redemptive, where a dismantled woman (Natasha Richardson) in her late twenties, divorced, burdened with child and confusion, looking ahead to 40 years of loneliness, seeks solace in one of the few options left available to her: the younger, good-looking, yet far too effeminate suitor (Rupert Everett).

Their pairing, unsettling at most every juncture, can only be upstaged by a spectacular Chris Walken performance as Robert, a predator of confusing lineage who smells blood in the water faster than OJ can smell the first tee.

It is the character Robert on whom the SNL parody `The Continental' is likely based, and Walken plays him so flawlessly that we may sometimes believe he has something but the basest on his mind, which of course, he has not.

Helen Mirren is perfect as Robert's co-dependent compadre.

Ignorance is never bliss in this day and age, and our story of a young couple indeed destined to suffer the consequences of their needless existence twists and turns tautly in their ill-timed venture to Venice.

Looking for fun? Next time, kids, try Disneyland.