Violence

I was completely taken by the trailer to the movie Surveillance. It made it look like a twisty crazy murder mystery. It's not. It's a fairly obvious strange movie about, I guess, the idea that we live in a world filled with predators and we are mostly screwed. It's not very good, aside for some truly left field perfomances by Julia Ormond and Bill Pullman.

The treatment of violence is peculiar. At first I thought that Lynch (the daughter, not the father) was going for a serious Haneke-esque lecture to comfortable middle class people about the dangers that await them. Later I thought it was going for a goofy Tarantino-esque use of violence to shock and titilate. Still later I think it was going for a horror film scarefest. None of these really fit the film and the slipping back and forth didn't help. Also, most of the characters are reprehensible without being terribly interesting.

The movie does have a few stand out moments. You will be shown an outre sex act you have probably never seen (nor considered.) If you are so inclined you can get a sense of what a crazy Bill Pullman O-face looks like. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.