Weekend Netflix Report: Surveillance (2008)

Poor Jennifer Lynch. The first film she directed, Boxing Helena (1993), was torn apart by the critics, though it wasn't nearly as bad as they said. (Nor was it a bloody film, despite what you might gather from a plot summary, but that's another story.) Being the daughter of David Lynch, critics were not going to cut her any slack, but a lot of them have had to with her new (and second) film, Surveillance. It's a very well made thriller, though an extremely violent and cold one. There's no one to really root for among the characters, except maybe for a nine-year-old girl, but even she seems to be 90-percent ice water.

The plot borrows some devices from Lynch's father, especially his Twin Peaks cult TV series and his Fire Walk With Me feature film. Two FBI agents visit a small-town police station to investigate some horrific serial killings -- but there's something a bit "off" about these agents. Now there's nothing unusual about FBI agents acting strange in a Lynch-family project, but what's odd about these J. Edgars turns out to be the key to the whole mystery.

Lynch uses some intriguing Rashomon flashback techniques to tell her story, including different film stocks as she shows what various witnesses to the crime saw, or say they saw, or think they saw, as the FBI agents videotape their testimony. A drug addict's tale, for example, is shown over-exposed, while the only fully reliable witness report (the little girl's) is shown with aching clarity.

This is an admirable but depressing film. Despite some similarities to Lynch's father's work, I don't think it's a film he would have made. (He reportedly called the script "sick," which is saying something, coming from him.) There's no surrealism or humor in it, nor is the ending uplifting. Even a more hopeful alternate ending included on the DVD isn't all that hopeful. This isn't the type of film you watch for pure entertainment; it's the type you watch if you find the darker aspects of human nature interesting and admire artful movie-making.