Year released: 2014
THE CHARGE: Wasting air conditioning and letting all the stank out.
THE EVIDENCE: Boy, this review was a poser to write. How do I start it off? Do I talk about Elijah Wood's increasing wide-eyed presence in the horror and thriller genres? Do I mention that director Nacho Vigalondo was the man behind Timecrimes, one of the best time travel stories ever put to film? Do I go straight for the reader's prurient interest and discuss the performance of ex-porn star Sasha Grey? Ultimately, I decided to just get right to the point: Open Windows blows.
Elijah Wood plays Nick, a blogger who's won a contest to have dinner with actress Jill Goddard, played by Grey. Nick is in his hotel watching Jill attend her latest movie premiere on his laptop while he gets ready for his big night, when he gets a call from someone representing the contest telling him that Jill's cancelled. But Nick shouldn't worry, no sir, because this guy knows that Jill can be a real diva and he's got a way to give Nick some face time with her if he's willing to play along.
Confused and reluctant, Nick eventually gives in to the mystery man's request to dim all the lights in his room and aim a camera at another hotel room window - one where Jill will be having a romantic rendezvous with her agent as soon as she's done addressing reporters and fans at her premiere. But when the lights in Nick's room suddenly flicker on, it gets the attention of the agent who realizes he's being filmed and sets off to find - and beat up - the guy behind the camera.
Well it looks like Nick is in a pickle until the mystery caller tells him to open a bag in his closet, which just happens to have a taser in it. When Jill's agent enters the room, after getting a key from someone at the front desk who tells him the room is unoccupied, Nick hits him with the taser. The caller then tells Nick to move a night stand, where he'll find a ball gag and handcuffs. And Nick suddenly realizes there might be something screwy going on around here.
The extra-long unrated director's cut of The Hobbit covered some strange ground.
The gimmick of Open Windows is that the entire movie ostensibly takes place in real time on Nick's laptop. Everything that happens is displayed on windows showing the feed from the laptop's webcam, or from surveillance cameras, or Skype-like screens of other people calling from their computers or cell phones. And this conceit immediately opens up the movie to its biggest flaw: computers can do anything!
It turns out that the mystery caller has nothing to do with Nick's contest. In fact, there wasn't ever really a contest in the first place. This is all the work of a hacker calling himself "Nevada" who wants to use Nick as a pawn in a scheme that eventually involves kidnapping Jill Goddard. And since Nevada now has footage from Nick's webcam of Nick tasering and imprisoning someone, Nick has to play along or else that footage goes to the police.
This has all the trappings of your basic Hollywood cyber-thiller that stretches the limits of believability. But then the movie REALLY goes off the rails with its depiction of technology. I'm talking stuff that makes CSI look like documentary footage. Nevada can remotely operate all the equipment in Nick's hotel room, including the lights. He can block Jill's cell phone from calling the police. He can take over what's described in the movie as "one third of the internet" with three tower servers. And then rival hackers get involved, who offer Nick a clear-as-day satellite view of Nevada's whereabouts despite it being pitch black outside, and who can even use some sort of x-ray vision to reveal what's in the trunk of Nevada's car.
Even with all plausibility stretched, snapped and ground into a fine powder, there was still potential for some popcorn enjoyment if it wasn't for the atrocious acting. Elijah Wood is clearly constrained by the movie's gimmick, being forced to constantly stare at the camera with his big blue Elijah eyes pleading for help as if he was being held for ransom. And Sasha Grey acts about as well as you'd expect a former porn star to act. The only scene in which she really looks comfortable is one where she's being coerced into disrobing.
Pictured: Sasha Grey's best dialogue scene.
After eighty interminable minutes of computers showing greater emotional range than the actors, we get to a scene that would make for a satisfactory ending. Unfortunately, the movie is 100 minutes long. The last twenty minutes are spent revealing a twist that reveals another twist that leads to yet another twist that deconstructs one of the former twists and... Jeez, this film has more false endings than the last Lord of the Rings movie. And not one single minute of it makes even the slightest bit of sense.
But as bad as the movie is, I do have to admit that, for better or worse, it has already been influential. The use of the laptop as the movie screen predated films like Unfriended and Ratter, and its extensive use of first person perspective late in the movie looks like it could have been test footage for 2015's Hardcore Henry. I admire the effort, I really do, but the execution ultimately causes Open Windows to crash.
THE VERDICT: Open Windows is GUILTY. Not of letting the stank out, but of being the source of the stank to begin with.
