Nigel Andrews, �Jaws: Bloomsbury Movie Guide No. 5�
Good thing I went to see Secret Window the other night, or I wouldn't have anything to talk about. Oh wait, I wanted to do shorter reviews - too bad I saw Secret Window the other day, because I could have just written something brief and gone back to playing Final Fantasy X.
Aside from 28 Days Later, it's been a long time since anybody has made a truly great horror film. I'm not sure why that is. I think there is still plenty of subject matter to utilize, but everyone is more content to have loud noises startle you then to bother working up a set of dread.
Jaws did that. Hell, you don't even get to see the shark until at least 40 minutes into the film, and by then, you're already scared of it. Secret Window by comparison follows the numbers already utilized in Blair Witch 2 and when the ending comes about, the audience doesn't care. Or at least the Girlfriend and I didn't. We were giggling as the poor defenseless girl was captured.
That doesn't have anything to do with the book, but what the hell.
The book suffers from the same repetition problem. In films, if you have the killer jump out to loud music two or three times, the audience, annoyed at the cheap manipulation, steadies themselves whenever there is a quiet moment. In books like this one, you divide the subject matter into bits, but keep bringing up points already covered. Yes, we know Bruce the Shark didn't work very well under later. Why bring it up seven times over five different chapters? In addition, with all the special edition videos and DVD's that have poured into the market, is there anything new to tell us?
Not really.
I still don't understand why they didn't shoot for a book that went through the chronological time-line of the film. They did actually utilize this format, but as the book is divided into sections, we end up with said repetition.
Finally, for me, the sign of a good book about a movie makes you want to see the movie again. "Julie Salamon's The Devil's Candy did that. That book was detailing the story behind the De Palma film, Bonfire of the Vanities, a film that is truly terrible. When I finished that book, I found a copy of the film and watched it again, even though I already knew it was terrible. THAT was a good book. I still haven't seen Jaws again.
Though after writing this, and seeing Secret Window, I wouldn't mind.
