BillZane

I'm sorry, but this movie just wasn't all that great. I rented it because it had a shiny cover, it said that it was by the author of I Know What You Did Last Summer, and it starred Soleil Moon Frye. But it just didn't work for me. The little attempts at romance were never fleshed out and should have either been strengthened or edited out. And I understand that the TV aspect lowered the body count drastically, but if they scared one girl to death (hokey hokey hokey), they could have used that excuse to ice another character or two. Instead, they just have some little troll-thingie with a cool looking weapon (4 nails... would have been better as 4 blades) who threatens his victims. Nope. But the acting was better than the average TV movie (worse than the average film, but hey), and some of the humor worked.

Before the opening credits ever appear in Arlington Road, this movie has slapped you in the face and given you a stern warning: This movie may not be for you. It will be violent, and it will be senseless, and it will scare you, and if you can't handle this, you can get out now. For those of us who stayed, however, the movie was an incredible experience. For the first 90 minutes, it worked on developing characters. You grieved with the father, and you felt strongly for the poor girlfriend in competition with a ghost for her man's love. You also gain the paranoia of Jeff Bridges, but the direction is so amazing that for twenty, thirty minutes, you think Bridges has gone psycho. The filmmakers leave a million "outs" in this movie - at ANY point before the climax, they could step back and say, "Whoops! Bridges is a quack, and the neighbors are totally normal!" I believed that would happen, even though the previews revealed WAY too much - I won't bring it up in case someone hasn't seen them, but you should NEVER tell the shock ending of a film in the preview. By the time the climax hits, I had actually squeezed out a tear in utter terror. Forget the traditional slasher flicks - Arlington Road is the scariest movie I have ever seen. 10 out of 10

This movie had across-the-board first-rate acting from Alan Cumming and Sidney Pollack to Tom and Nicole. Everyone seemed to be fully involved in who their characters were, and you could tell some time had been spent developing this. But it still turned out to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen! I can give you a plot summary in maybe four steps:

Tom Cruise walks around New York to one of two locations and spends ludicrous amounts of money.

Tom Cruise says he's a doctor.

Tom Cruise thinks of Nicole Kidman.

Repeat if necessary until you have thoroughly wasted 2 1/2 hours of the audience's time.

The soundtrack was just some maniac on a piano banging a note at a time as hard as he could. The only noticeable song, Chris Isaak's "Bad, Bad Thing" was a bit of irony in that his characters never actually DO bad things. They just think about them or watch, and I'm sorry, but that's terribly boring. I will do my best to remember this film for the stellar performances and not the depressing technical failures. 2 out of 10