Look

Look (2007) is a Thriller/Drama juxtaposition of the lives of a teenage girl and her quest for male domination (Spencer Redfield), a high school teacher caught in her line of fire (Jamie McShane), a retail manager who can't keep his hands off his female employees (Hayes MacArthur), a cubicle worker who's the butt of the joke (Ben Weber), a closeted homosexual lawyer with a wife and two children (Paul Schackman), a gritty teenage boy who works at a mini mart planning to make it big singing, and two psychopaths on a killing spree (Sebastian Feldman & Rhys Coiro). The story is told to us through security/hidden cameras located in the lifes of the characters, and as each of their individual stories unfolds, we come to see how they've been connected all along at the end.

The film both written and directed by Adam Rifkin, who has infamously written childhood films of mine such as Mousehunt and Small Soldiers. It's shot entirely on CineAlta cameras placed where a hidden camera already existed to give it the realistic feel of characters being caught unaware in their daily lives. Hopefully the viewers have already figured out that this is not a "reality" film. The characters in the film are scripted and played by actors. The film recieved relatively mized views on many different film review websites, but interestingly enough, the concept was picked up by Showtime as a realilty TV show in January of 2010, released in October, 2010, which aired every Sunday. There was a bit of scandal surrounding advertising for the film, as they asked the post office to distribute a photograph of a mail room with a man screwing a girl with his pants conveniently around his ankles. The nudity was not the issue. The issue was the caption, which read: "It is LEGAL for your company to get permission to install HIDDEN CAMERAS IN THE WORKPLACE!"

Acting. In a film that's set to mimic or mock reality, acting is one of the most fundamental tools available to the filmmakers. In this case, I would say it achieved a 7/10. The beginning of the movie was a little hard to swallow- the scene of the young girls talking to one another. It was heavy-handed, hoakey, and not good. Several of the actors however were natural as could be, such as Mr. Crabbs (Jamie McShane) and Marty (Ben Weber). After the first 15 minutes of the 95 minute movie, the actors seemed much more into their roles and playing them slightly above the B Movie line, so it was easier to fall into and watch more pleasurably. An interesting fact about the film is that during the climax of the movie- which I will not detail for spoiler purposes- the filmmakers shut down the Santa Monica Freeway for exactly 1 hour to film the entire climax. 20 minutes from time running out and they still didn't have the crucial shots. They raced around like chickens with their heads cut off, in the traditional sense of an ACTUAL climax and managed to scrap together something climax-worthy just in time for the cops to tell them to pack up and get out to reopen the freeway.

Cinematography. Again, in a film directly immitating reality TV this is an essential part to get DOWN. I think they had it. It's hard to write a shot plan for a movie that's going to look like reality TV, and we've all seen an episode of reality television, regardless of what your stance on it is. There's not a lot of shot variation. It's tempting for a cinematographer to add more shots than its really possible to have so that the movie flows with more entertainment value. In my opinion, the cinematographers did that very little in this piece, so 9/10 there. Based soley on the shot plan, it definitely felt like "reality" filmmaking.

Writing. We all knew I was going to talk about the writing, of course. At first glance, I thought the writing for this film was going to be an interesting thing to take in. After the film started, I was like, "Oh... God, no." There are moments- especially in the beginning when the writer is trying to define a character for you when things are simply too obvious; characters don't say exactly what they feel CERTAINLY not in real life. There are moments when the young girls aren't believable, or the retail manager. Aside from that, the story itself genuinely surprised me. I knew it was of the thriller genre, but I sortof forgot that when I was watching the characters go about their lives, so the many twists and turns that come out suddenly felt great to me. The ending of the movie was really nice- and the ending SCENE was fucking hilarious, given what you've learned about the character. Priceless.

Soundtrack... in the film, you're made to believe that the mini-mart worker Ben was the person writing the soundtrack to the film, as when the music ends, he's always conveniently putting away his electric keyboard- and I thought that was wicked funny. In truth, the sountrack was done by BT, a well-known soundtrack composer who has also worked on Zoolander, Go, The Fast and the Furious, Mortal Combat, and American Pie 2.

All in all, I liked watching this movie. It's not my favorite film I've ever seen and it's certainly not for everyone. I would say that it's for a person who can get past the "this isn't reality but I'm meant to think it is" barrier. Also, I'm not sure how exactly this happened, but this film has a very Cabin Fever feel to it. It's not a horror movie, it's not gorey, and it's not by Eli Roth, but somehow it reminds. It has moments of humor, shock, and definitely entertainment. It's not perfect, but it's not bad.