Tell Tale

source: Tell Tale

After watching a lot of movies shot in Canada for the tax credit, I thought this was another one of them. Providence is a strange looking place, and except for the capitol building, it looked like Canada to me. I am glad to have gotten to see what it looks like. It's kind of disappointing that it turns out to look like some place not so much different from Quebec, down to the French business names. A movie about vigilantism usually gets its tension from the conflict between the morality of the vigilante's actions and the prudence of having and using a legal system. This movie tends to minimize even the imprudence of vigilante action, which waters down his desperation and the tension in the film. The continuity of this movie is noticeably off. The protagonist's hair style is noticeably different between one scene and the next one in continuity. Josh Lucas's performance is narrow in range. So is Brian Cox's, but that may be attributable to the murkiness of his motivation in the script. Lena Hedley's performance is spellbinding. She's a convincing medical expert, always dignified and caring, but a passionate lover. Beatrice Miller's a cute kid and a good actor.

I give this movie a perfect 10 out of 10 stars because it is an awesome modernization of Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart...but viewer, be warned...I'm a grown-ass man of 37 years who has been watching horror movies since he was 8 years old...and I almost vomited at one point during this movie! Like my review title says, it's sicker than any Friday the 13th movie I have EVER seen, and I don't know how a certain IMDb reviewer from Argentina found this movie to be "boring"...IT IS ANYTHING BUT BORING! SPOILER BELOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OK...what's gross about this movie? At one point, they have Josh Lucas in a bathtub covered in ice, and they start cutting out his organs...while he's awake! Seriously, I almost vomited! Just trust me when I say it's gross! Again...10 out of 10 stars due to the great plot and ingenious re-telling of the Poe classic...but NOT for the faint of heart! I won't be watching this one again...it's just too gross!!!

Terry Bernard (Josh Lucas) is in love with his daughter's doctor Elizabeth Clemson (Lena Headey). He had a heart transplant. He has visions from his pounding heart. He recognizes the paramedic attacking him in the vision and tries to confront him. A fight ensues and Terry accidentally kills him. He discovers the identity of the heart donor and contacts police detective Phillip Van Doren (Brian Cox) who investigated the case. He uncovers a dark conspiracy and a secret pointed right at his heart. This is suppose to be a reworking of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart". I didn't really get the reference the first time I watched it. There's a reason for that. Terry is not guilty of anything. That's the whole point of the Poe story but I guess the writer missed that. The hearts of the two stories are completely different. I love all three main actors but the story lacks intensity. The mystery of the story is never really in doubt. It's simply about the identity of the villains. It would have worked a lot better if Terry paid for the heart.

While not following Poe step by step...this movie was so refreshing from all the other "transplant possession" movies. Great twist! Loved it! As usual Lucas gives a stellar performance and the ending was truly the icing on the cake! I sure didn't see that coming! His confusion and horror at his actions was palpable and I especially love that the writers didn't "talk down" to the audience and kept everything very subtle so as to force the audience to figure it out for ourselves. I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes this type of movie but perhaps is tired of the usual "donor was murdered and possesses the donee (or whatever they're called) in order to find the murderer" type of movies. This one takes that and gives it several big twists all the way to the very last scene of the movie. Loved it!

After receiving a heart transplant, genuinely nice guy Lucas encounters both the very attractive female doctor who cares for his seriously ill daughter and visions of murder and mayhem he has to make sense of. Very loosely based on Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart," which is at its core an inner monologue of a mad man that lasts only a few pages, scribe Dave Callaham expanded, embellished and embroidered the story for the modern age. In the gifted hands of helmer Michael Cuesta ("L.I.E.," "Twelve and Holding," TV's "Dexter") the so-so plot gets elevated to art-house standards with Lena Headley and Josh Lucas oozing believable chemistry, and the always exceptional Brian Cox making a lasting impression as a cop with an agenda of his own. Ends as abruptly as a punch in the guts, but it's definitely worth a glimpse

Okay, I'm not gonna say anything at all like 'This was the worst movie ever', because it certainly is not. BUT... 'Painful', yes. Okay, sure this is a very familiar idea, fine; that doesn't bother me at all. There are a LOT of reworked ideas that we see done over and over all the time, and for me anyway as long as the film is done well they don't ALL have to be totally original. Just about ANY story based however loosely on POE is great with me (same thing with Philip K. Dick) BUT... That's not it. First off, I am REALLY surprised that this is a Scott Free production. I'm amazed that the Scott Brothers had anything at all to do with this director, period. And that, in my lowly and wretched opinion, is precisely what is wrong with this film. The director. I mean, couldn't ol' Ridley and Tony at least have found a better director? Geez... One word: Amateurish. I know that word is probably overworked here, but that truly is what I believe killed this film. Not overtly HORRIBLE, no... But, enough little things that added up so that by about 30 minutes I was so irritated, that I had indeed had quite enough. Here are just a few things, and no, they in themselves are not really awful, but to me anyway they're so obvious that it REALLY takes you right out of the film. First off, and I KNOW many are gonna think this is really silly, but ANY director that for some bizarre unknown reason HAS to have the characters giving their dialog while they are chewing their food 4 FRIGG'N TIMES in the first 20 minutes is an amateur. I know, I know, it may seem petty, but it's like the director somehow thinks that this makes the movie more 'Real to Life' somehow as if any of us are interested in seeing about a third of the dialog given with their mouth's full (like 'Ooh, see this is what REAL people do' - uh huh... apparently they must do it frigg'n CONSTANTLY by how much it is portrayed here. Second, and much more annoying and a sure sign to me anyway that the director is an amateur (BTW, when I use 'amateur', I mean in this context an UNTALENTED amateur - many first time 'amateur' directors CAN be absolutely brilliant!) is when the sound design is SO horribly UNnatural that every little rustle of paper and every little movement is amplified and raised to ridiculously artificial levels. And God forbid anyone should poor a drink clear across the room without the ear shattering sound of the liquid hitting the glass (Oh yeah, VERY realistic there...) Like I said, Amateur Time... (Now, I admit that these two areas regarding the 'sound' particularly annoy me - perhaps they wouldn't bother someone else as much) Next, the script itself is really trying. And I don't mean 'Trying' as in really making an attempt either. First, the little girl (who is very cute and lovely, BTW) spouts these completely unrealistic lines that a six year old would never likely say. And DON'T get me started on the 'romantic' interplay between the two leads; can you say 'AWKWARD'...? So, it honestly is a shame that this film wasn't placed in MUCH better hands; even with the moderately painful dialog, at least with a good director, it could have been possible to improve the quality and bring out better performances. Then, perhaps this movie might have had a chance to be quite good. But no... Sadly, in a word... Painful...

An obvious re-make of the Poe story, there is good suspense here and Josh Lucas makes the character noteworthy and sympathetic. There is a side-story with his daughter also being sick as he is recipient of a heart transplant. Lucas begins to investigate the death of his donor Jean Vielliard, whom he finds out murdered himself and his wife. Brian Cox is very good as usual, as a detective who is aware that suspicious deaths are happening around the hospital. While the story has been done, this has a decent twist, a good scene with Dallas Roberts as an evil transplant surgeon, and overall interesting viewing. Anyone interested in the actual Edgar Allen Poe story should watch the Vincent Price film, and also there was a very good version on PBS in the late 80's starring Treat Williams as the murderer. Worth viewing and a good tale. 9/10.

There's something uniquely frustrating about this film. Bad movies are a certain kind of disappointment. Good movies that go bad are another. Tell Tale aims at and successfully achieves a complacent mediocrity and then just as it suggests it might become something better, it goes right in the toilet. Being lulled into a resigned acceptance, only to have your hopes raised and then instantly dashed is an aggravating emotional whiplash. I usually wish that movies had been better. I would have preferred this one to be worse, sparing me those few bitter moments of futile hope. Based loosely, and I mean very loosely, on Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", this motion picture is about Terry Bernard (Josh Lucas). He's a recent heart transplant recipient trying to get his life back in order. He's got a young daughter named Angela (Beatrice Miller) with a terminal genetic disorder and Angela has a beautiful doctor named Liz (Lena Headey) who's also pretty fond of Terry. I'd like to tell you more about these characters but they don't have any distinct personalities. If you smushed all their defining character traits together you still wouldn't have anything resembling a three dimensional human being. Terry starts having these episodes where he hears his heart thundering in his ears and sees strange images of people milling about in a dark room. These episodes eventually lead to Terry killing people and with the help of a jaded detective (Brian Cox), he learns that his victims are the people who killed the person whose heart now beats in Terry's chest. And that demanding, magical organ isn't gong to let Terry stop killing. Now, let me give you an example of what I mean by Tell Tale being mediocre. A pretty big deal is made of Angela's genetic disorder, to the point where there's an entire scene built around it. Terry having a sick daughter, though, let alone one with a very rare and heart-breaking condition, never goes anywhere or amounts to anything. It doesn't play any role in the plot. It's not connected to anything else in the story. Angela's disease doesn't mirror Terry's condition or link up with it thematically somehow. You could make Angela healthy and Liz her math tutor without changing anything significant in this film. And that's what I mean by mediocre. Tell Tale isn't bad, there's simply no depth or complexity or sophistication to any of it. Which is okay. A mediocre movie is better than a bad one, but then this flick has to go and suddenly get smart. It begins to suggest that the heart isn't only using Terry for vengeance. The heart may be changing Terry into its original owner, setting up a second and more intriguing conflict. The heart isn't only taking revenge…it's also taking Terry's identity. But as that concept starts to emerge from the mire, the film abruptly turns stupid and falls into an overly melodramatic ending that only works because Tell Tale violates its central premise. All of the supernatural powers the heart has demonstrated throughout the story are pounded away by the Almighty Plot Hammer and Terry is left a helpless victim before his enemies because writer David Callaham apparently couldn't figure out a way to write a climax that didn't involve one cliché after another. All of the actors here do good work, with Josh Lucas exceeding the barren script to create believable relationships for Terry with both Angela and Liz. Lena Headey admirably soldiers through a typically thankless girlfriend role and looks amazing. Brian Cox is possibly the best thing in the production as a cynical, defeated cop given new hope by the unbelievable until he's betrayed by a crushingly trite motivation. And director Michael Cuesta does a perfectly acceptable job. It's dispiriting turn at the end leaves Tell Tale a sub-mediocre 90 minute movie that could have been a worthwhile 2 hour flick if it had followed through on its potential. It didn't, so it's not worth your while

I have to admit when I first heard about this film I was very skeptical, seeing as Edgar Allen Poe's story was one of my favorites growing up. Tell Tale takes the original Poe idea and successfully expands on it, giving it a modern day twist. The film follows a man who has recently received a heart transplant from a person who was brutally murdered for their organs. The story's main character soon begins an investigation that challenges his very sanity. Josh Lucas as the lead does an excellent job. Lucas who has a background of starring in indie horror films like Session 9, delivers yet again with a solid performance the viewer can identify with. Tell Tale does have some weaknesses like most indie horror films do, mainly do to budget restrictions but its a decent effort. Overall, Tell Tale is worth watching.