Hard to believe but it’s been an entire year since I first posted a trailer for Jennifer Lynch’s long awaited sophomore release. It may not be long awaited since her first film was either ignored or disliked by the few who saw it, but here we are, 16 years after her debut with a thriller titled Surveillance.
The film stars Bill Pullman as an FBI agent who tracks a serial killer with the help of three victims, including a child, who escaped from the killer’s grasp. Along for the ride are Julia Ormond who appears to play a psychologist and the always awesome Michael Ironside in a small role as a police captain.
From memory (since that original trailer has now disappeared), this looks similar to the first but I don’t recall the surveillance images which seem to be added material. I also get a feeling of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with the apparent involvement of the cops (in the trailer at least) and the strange mask work by the killer. The resulting trailer is disturbing and a little scary (not to mention kids in these types of movies are generally creepy).
Surveillance has played a number of festivals and has opened throughout most of Europe complete with DVD releases in some regions, but it’s not scheduled to open on this side of the water, and in limited release no less, until June 26th.
Thanks to our friends at Twitch, check out the trailer below.
Essentially a straight to dvd B-movie thriller which was a breath of fresh air after I came out of watchmen, I was feeling less than satisfied and saw that this movie was about to begin and had to go back into the dark for another hit. As you said Marina it had been a while since this had been posted around web the first time and I had forgot pretty much everything apart from the general concept. It is quirky and nasty little thriller that has some great performances for a film of it’s type, Ironside and French are fun and Pullman is great, he acts like he just walked out of a movie by David Lynch and it shares some audio/visual similarities to his work, less celebral and esoteric of course but also to its credit a lot leaner. Dark rural disposable fun.
Thanks for that Lee. I was interested in seeing it and had completely forgotten about it until it was posted at Twitch. Will have to keep my eye peeled for it but I’m not sure it’ll open around these parts. May have to wait for DVD.
@Lee – Kinda like BOARDING GATE? (If so, high compliments to Surveillance.)
It’s not a perfect movie by any stretch but very entertaining and may probably work better on dvd.
@kurt – I recently watched Boarding Gate due to your recommendation and yeah I loved it, two actors I really like to see, finally doing some interesting work again.
Plus throw in some Brian Eno, music for films which added a kind of hypnotic tone.
I would say they are both lean B movies, and both could be said to fall apart in the third act but in my opinion I think they push the genre formula so far that it just made me smile. I was impressed with lynch’s tight direction and as with Boarding Gate i was laughing a lot. lets face it everything seems better without julian sands.
“they push the genre formula so far that it just made me smile”
Now we are speaking the same language.
Ditto on Mr. Sands who made even WARLOCK watchable!
I think I’m going to have to re-rent Boarding Gate. I really disliked it the first time around but considering the love around here, maybe I missed something.
Boarding Gate simply -> Breathes. In ways that genre pictures usually don’t (and usually don’t try). It’s a euro-mirror world version of American trash cinema, and it works like fuckin’ gangbusters.
@Kurt- Boarding Gate was my first taste of Olivier Assayas, what other Assayas titles would you suggest?
Irma Vep is a must. But also Demon Lover, as it is in the same spirit as BG.
Clean is worth a look, as is Summer Hours, but the latter two are more straight up dramas than Genre meditations….
Cheers Kurt. Wow I Just checked the cast for ‘Clean’, Nick Nolte, Maggie Cheung and Béatrice Dalle.
Mouthwatering at the least.
Also, Clean is shot (and set) in Hamilton (Canada), Paris (France), London (England) and Cheung speaks French, English and Mandarin over the duration. It is a very good film, and don’t forget Don McKellar is in there too, at least for the Canadian segment.
I reviewed the film over at Twitch when it was on the festival circuit in 2005:
http://twitchfilm.net/archives/2005/02/clean_review.html
Further more here is a better writer than myself, over at Twitch, reviewing Summer Hours:
http://twitchfilm.net/site/view/tiff-review-08summer-hours/
That sounds like the ticket, just what I’ll need after I finish my Larry Cohen mini marathon, class it up a little.
I may even sneak another look at BG, there is something very elusive about that movie.