Spoiler Alert!

Dudes, I’m serious—I’m just gonna spout all over the place about “Secret Window,” newest movie from Johnny Depp, fantastic hot actor guy. This used to be part of an earlier post about my entire afternoon-evening-early early morning, but Blogger ate it twice, so I’m just giving up on all but my mini-rant. So, once more, SPOILER ALERT.

Ta da.

As a movie theater employee, Sam brought Hope and me to the free movie preview of “Secret Window” on Thursday night after all the publically scheduled movies had finished. I bought a package of Twizzlers from Wal-Mart earlier in the evening and snuck them in by way of my apparently-twizzler-sized purse (one of my favorite movie memories is of passing a twizzler to Sam during “The Others” and having her totally jump at a non-scary part).

Anyway.

Everyone mocked the previews, but we settled in once the actual movie started. The movie had a genuinely creepy vibe going (mysterious visitors, the dog gets death by screwdriver, the shovel scene seen partially in the tv previews), though the plot was becoming more and more unlikely.

And then came the squirrel.

Around Truman’s campus, everyone *knows* the squirrels are insane. It’s just something you pick up during freshman week, I guess. The squirrels around campus are insane, probably want us all dead, and will attack us for no reason (seen it happen). Rather than being terrified of the squirrels, they are instead a point of personal pride. Where else can you find psychotic squirrels? Frankly, they amuse me. This is why the shot of the squirrel going berserk mid-movie caused me (and Hope) to burst out in loud laughter.

Apparently this was the breaking point for everyone else in the theater, as everyone around us (all ten people) proceeded to mock the rest of the movie. And, trust me, there’s lots there. I’d found the boyfriend guy annoying throughout the entire film and was happy to see Johnny Depp take him out with the shovel (though I didn’t need to watch him stabbed to death with said shovel). And the “shooter” – “shoot her” I will admit was a nice touch.

But, couldn’t we come up with something better than a split personality psychotic Johnny Depp? Especially once we made it fit so perfect to be a set up from the boyfriend; that conversation at the gas station (where the boyfriend takes credit for what’s going on) fits more for the Mississippi stranger than for him taking responsibility for the divorce situation. I guess that’s why he did that weird mouth stretching thing throughout the movie, also. I’d like to ask one question of the general population (as I did of Sam during the film and Hope after): does it make me a bad person that I thought Johnny Depp was even hotter once he picked up the southern accent himself and was wearing the ominous black hat all jaunty-like? I mean, he wasn’t hot because he was killing people off, but, oh, he could talk to me in southern all the time.

And what was with the corn?!? I guess it’s understandable that the garden wouldn’t stick around after he dug everything up to bury the bodies, but does corn have a special quality where it covers all evidence of decaying, shovel-killed bodies? And how hard would it be to find the car (with his watch, screwdriver, and all sorts of evidence) that close to the edge of the lake? Surely the car left some track marks leading right off the cliff that the police picked up on.

I won’t even go into all of them, but I hate that the thriller/mystery/etc genre generally relies on all the main characters making really stupid mistakes or just doing idiotic things people in real life wouldn’t do (such as staying in a solitary house in the middle of nowhere after receiving numerous death threats). I know that if they did everything I’d do in the situation, the movie would end in approximately fifteen minutes (including exposition), but surely some fabulous writer out there can come up with a better method. Though, in this movie specifically, all the stupid mistakes were justified in a “logical” (I use that word lightly) manner, they still bugged me until (and some after) I discovered the explanation.

Still, I enjoyed Johnny Depp (even when he wasn’t a psychotic Mississippi southern-spewing murderer) in the role, as kinda out there as it was. I got my money’s worth for the show, and I have bragging rights of seeing it before the movie was open for the general public. I’ll eat an ear of corn to that.