Secret Window
August 2004 Reviewed by: Anthony Di Marco Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

I’ve always found Stephen King’s work scary because of what my imagination conjured up -- not because of some uniquely terrifying idea within the story. Writer and director David Koepp does an admirable, if not exceptional job of adapting Stephen King’s novella Secret Window, Secret Garden for the screen. Unfortunately, the result isn’t very scary or disturbing.

Two elements save this film from the mundane. The consistently interesting Johnny Depp does a fine job at injecting mood and personality into the character of Mort Rainey. Depp creates a character more confused than crazy, more quirky than abnormal. Often, psychotics are played "crazy" to make the audience think they are crazy. Their psychosis amounts to nothing other than gigantic mood swings. Here Depp’s mood is quiet, almost catatonic. It is only when the mysterious John Shooter comes around that he becomes more unhinged. And who wouldn’t act disturbed if they were being stalked? The problem is that I was more interested in Depp’s performance than the plight of Rainey.

Secondary characters are superficial, and John Turturro’s hackneyed Southern drawl made me pray for his demise. Only Charles S. Dutton offers some dimension as a high-priced private investigator and Rainey’s only true connection to reality.

The score is quite good and, like Depp’s performance, helps this thin story along. Philip Glass contributes music that stays honest to his minimalist roots while instilling menace into the narrative. Although it may not be as interesting as some of his other works -- like the classic Itaipu -- it complements the psychological undercurrent of the film.

Audio holds together nicely. The sound design is all about creating mood and foreshadowing. Director Koepp chooses to keep the music to a minimum while relying on incidental sounds, like dripping water and the startling din of an alarm clock, to punctuate visuals.

DVD production and mastering have become common enough that studios have a reliable process in place. Secret Window’s transfer exhibits strong colors against inky, solid blacks. There was some softness and a little noise in out-of-focus shots, but everything in the foreground was crisp and vibrant.

There are not as many featurettes as the DVD would have you think. Three different sections take the viewer from script to screen but aren’t all that enlightening, and much of it seems to have been assembled from various junket-type interviews. Like the majority of their ilk, it was apparent why the deleted scenes did not make the final cut, and this is especially true for the extended ending, which hits the audience over the head with Amy Rainey and Ted Milner’s ultimate fate.

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