If you were to take the rough elements of Sucker Punch, the Cinematography of The Crow, the lighting from Saw 2, steal the sex scene from Fight Club and write a jumbled concept of a plot as conceived by an angsty, 16 year old alt-rocker girl after briefly perusing the Wikipedia entry for Dissociative Identity Disorder (which she is SO totally convinced she has), you'd have this unspectacular lump of a film.
The movie is essentially a flashback bookended by the prologue and epilogue in current time. Suki (Katie Cassidy) is in police custody and being interviewed by a stock character detective (Michael Imperioli) and a criminal psychologist (Eliza Dushku) regarding the rash of apparent suicides in Juniper (nicknamed "jumper") towers, an unsupervised transitional living quarters for mostly rehabilitated mental patients. For some reason or another, Suki is being blamed for the recent suicides, which is why we assume the authorities are there in the first place. much later in the film, we see that ALL of the authorities are called to Juniper Towers right before the (anti) climactic showdown between two, well, electric super-psychos, but never mind continuity with this heap.....
We learn that Suki has Dissociative identity Disorder and, despite this, has been released to this unsupervised, unregulated, derelict s**t-hole tenement tower apartment building, presumably occupied by 16 floors of psychos in various stages of devolution. Her prescription is to, um, hook a car battery up to her face and (this is a direct quote now) "burn her alters" out of her head, because... science? eventually, one of her alter egos frankensteins the machine to release her true self by the power of electrical engineering ex machina, but it's really too dumb to explain. whatever.
she meets a very bland cast of characters who all have zero development and zero thought put into them other than this one is the "snake wearing, Egypt loving sex maniac" type of crazy and this one is "the wander around naked" kind of crazy... I think there's one other in the entire building and i'm pretty sure she wore bunny ears or something as lazy, but she has two lines and that's pretty much it.
Suki is reunited with someone she met in the actual mental facility who is the only guy in the building (and as far as I saw, one of maybe 7 people total in the whole damn thing) and he takes it upon himself to be the local stud in the ranch. Much later, we meet his girlfriend who is the only other character with any sort of lines, so its not hard to deduce who the bad guy is in this bore fest and... you know what? I'm just done. this movie tried so hard to be cool and edgy but is just dumb, boring and ridiculous.
What It Did Well: I'll admit, there was a lot of work put in to the scribbling on the walls and the general, derelict atmosphere of the building (however unrealistic it may have been). also, Michelle Trachtenberg all gothed up was good times for the 10 minutes of screen time she actually had. and there was some pointless nudity (sadly, not Michelle Trachtenberg).
What It Failed At Doing: Everything. there wasn't much of a plot, or a point, or acting, or emotion, or characterization, or a premise, or research into the disorder Suki had, or in any kind of philosophy behind the nonsense and the special effects weren't that special.
!!!!SPOILERS!!!!!
So Wait....
If Alice was killing these girls instead of them jumping to their deaths, she must've been doing it for a while, since the building was renamed Jumper Tower in response to the high jump rate. so why is she just reported missing from the institution 3/4 of the way through the movie? That means she's been missing for months and nobody noticed.
Also, why are the cops investigating these suicides as murders and questioning Suki about them if they supposedly were only called roughly 15 movie minutes prior by the doctor and (sort of) Alice? And why are they only now investigating if these suicides have been going on for a while (presuming they in fact weren't there because of the phone call).
the building is 16 stories tall and only 6 people live in the damn thing, all of whom are mental patient releases, with zero supervision, upkeep, care, help programs etc... I know I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating because of how head-slappingly stupid it is.
So if the Scribbler needed the machine to get free, and the first time we see her, she is already defying gravity and other laws of physics, why did she need to the modify the machine to get stronger? she didn't seem to get any stronger than she already was... and are the machine's effects only temporary? the dog went back to normal, Hogan went back to normal, but the Scribbler stayed and Bad Alice stayed sort of as they were.
Ugh. just do yourself a favor and watch Sucker Punch and The Ward instead.
The movie is essentially a flashback bookended by the prologue and epilogue in current time. Suki (Katie Cassidy) is in police custody and being interviewed by a stock character detective (Michael Imperioli) and a criminal psychologist (Eliza Dushku) regarding the rash of apparent suicides in Juniper (nicknamed "jumper") towers, an unsupervised transitional living quarters for mostly rehabilitated mental patients. For some reason or another, Suki is being blamed for the recent suicides, which is why we assume the authorities are there in the first place. much later in the film, we see that ALL of the authorities are called to Juniper Towers right before the (anti) climactic showdown between two, well, electric super-psychos, but never mind continuity with this heap.....
We learn that Suki has Dissociative identity Disorder and, despite this, has been released to this unsupervised, unregulated, derelict s**t-hole tenement tower apartment building, presumably occupied by 16 floors of psychos in various stages of devolution. Her prescription is to, um, hook a car battery up to her face and (this is a direct quote now) "burn her alters" out of her head, because... science? eventually, one of her alter egos frankensteins the machine to release her true self by the power of electrical engineering ex machina, but it's really too dumb to explain. whatever.
she meets a very bland cast of characters who all have zero development and zero thought put into them other than this one is the "snake wearing, Egypt loving sex maniac" type of crazy and this one is "the wander around naked" kind of crazy... I think there's one other in the entire building and i'm pretty sure she wore bunny ears or something as lazy, but she has two lines and that's pretty much it.
Suki is reunited with someone she met in the actual mental facility who is the only guy in the building (and as far as I saw, one of maybe 7 people total in the whole damn thing) and he takes it upon himself to be the local stud in the ranch. Much later, we meet his girlfriend who is the only other character with any sort of lines, so its not hard to deduce who the bad guy is in this bore fest and... you know what? I'm just done. this movie tried so hard to be cool and edgy but is just dumb, boring and ridiculous.
What It Did Well: I'll admit, there was a lot of work put in to the scribbling on the walls and the general, derelict atmosphere of the building (however unrealistic it may have been). also, Michelle Trachtenberg all gothed up was good times for the 10 minutes of screen time she actually had. and there was some pointless nudity (sadly, not Michelle Trachtenberg).
What It Failed At Doing: Everything. there wasn't much of a plot, or a point, or acting, or emotion, or characterization, or a premise, or research into the disorder Suki had, or in any kind of philosophy behind the nonsense and the special effects weren't that special.
!!!!SPOILERS!!!!!
So Wait....
If Alice was killing these girls instead of them jumping to their deaths, she must've been doing it for a while, since the building was renamed Jumper Tower in response to the high jump rate. so why is she just reported missing from the institution 3/4 of the way through the movie? That means she's been missing for months and nobody noticed.
Also, why are the cops investigating these suicides as murders and questioning Suki about them if they supposedly were only called roughly 15 movie minutes prior by the doctor and (sort of) Alice? And why are they only now investigating if these suicides have been going on for a while (presuming they in fact weren't there because of the phone call).
the building is 16 stories tall and only 6 people live in the damn thing, all of whom are mental patient releases, with zero supervision, upkeep, care, help programs etc... I know I mentioned this before, but it bears repeating because of how head-slappingly stupid it is.
So if the Scribbler needed the machine to get free, and the first time we see her, she is already defying gravity and other laws of physics, why did she need to the modify the machine to get stronger? she didn't seem to get any stronger than she already was... and are the machine's effects only temporary? the dog went back to normal, Hogan went back to normal, but the Scribbler stayed and Bad Alice stayed sort of as they were.
Ugh. just do yourself a favor and watch Sucker Punch and The Ward instead.