The secret window

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Movie
German title The secret window
Original title Secret Window
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2004
length 92 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director David Koepp
script David Koepp
production Gavin Polone
music Philip Glass
camera Fred Murphy
cut Jill Savitt
occupation

Secret Window is a thriller from David Koepp from 2004. The film is based on the novel The Secret Window, Secret Garden ( Secret Window, Secret Garden ) from the book Langoliers by Stephen King .

action

After separating from his wife, the writer Mort Rainey retreats to a remote house. While writer's block prevents him from working, he is confronted with another problem: a strange man named John Shooter accuses him of plagiarism in his story The Secret Window . Shooter claims to have written the story in 1997, but Mort published it in a magazine back in 1995. Asking him to produce a copy of the magazine that would prove his authorship within three days, Shooter substantiates the seriousness of his threat by killing Mort's dog and warning him to call the police.

But Mort's edition of the magazine, which is stored in the house of his still-wife Amy, is destroyed when the house goes up in flames under unexplained circumstances. And when he orders a second edition of the magazine from his agent and receives it towards the end of the plot, the pages of the story are missing from it. Feeling threatened, Mort finally turns to the local sheriff, who is unable to help him. Rainey then hires the private detective Ken Karsch. As this research goes on, the situation becomes more threatening and the lines between reality and fiction become more and more blurred. Ken Karsch and an old man from the nearby village who allegedly saw Mort with Shooter are murdered by Shooter when he summons Rainey to a meeting.

In the end, it turns out that Mort is himself a shooter, that, without even realizing it, he slipped into the role of this character he had invented in order to take revenge on his ex-wife as a shooter , which Mort himself does was unable to. Rainey has therefore committed all the murders and set fire to the house of his still-wife. When she visits him about the divorce formalities that he has dragged off, he murders her - as does her new partner Ted, who has secretly followed her. The name Shooter turns out to be a homophone from Shoot her ("Shoot them").

After he committed the murders, Rainey goes about his daily work as a writer almost unimpressed. However , when he visits the house, the sheriff admonishes him to stay away from the city, as his fellow human beings are uncomfortable with it. He will also prove the murders to him at some point - even if no corpses have appeared so far. In the final scene, you see Mort Rainey growing corn on the graves, just as he described it in the story The Secret Window , in order to cover up the traces of his crime.

Others

  • For the scene when Rainey dreams of falling on a cliff, the background was taken from unused footage for Forgotten World: Jurassic Park , for which David Koepp also worked as a screenwriter.
  • In one scene the novel The Rum Diary lies on Mort's desk. Even then, a film adaptation of this work with Johnny Depp in the lead role was planned, which was finally released in 2011.
  • The scene in which Mort sees the back of his head in the mirror instead of his face is very reminiscent of the painting La Reproduction interdite by René Magritte from 1937.
  • The film premiered on German free TV on Sunday, December 17, 2006, on the ProSieben TV station . The first broadcast was watched by around 1.98 million German citizens, which corresponded to a market share of 5.6 percent.
  • Filmstarts .de puts the thriller budget at $ 40 million.

Reviews

“'The Secret Window' is solid mystery cinema that lives more from its mood and its well-crafted characters than from a fast-paced, gripping production. There is tension, but it often drags on tenaciously. The finale after the big turning point can at least come up with a sympathetic consistency that makes up for a bit of what was previously missed. "

- Carsten Baumgardt : Filmstarts.de

“Narrated at a leisurely pace, the psychological puzzle by ' Panic Room ' author David Koepp Hitchcock aims for deep abysses of the soul. But it is only enough for a shallow variety of the Stephen King film ' Misery '. Conclusion: Psychological horror, well cast in supporting roles, whose punch line is unfortunately announced all too early. "

- cinema

"Film adaptation of a short story by Stephen King, which as a horror thriller already fails because of the poorly developed story. The convincing main actor works in many ways against the genre conventions, which is quite fascinating, but at the same time helps prevent the tension inherent in the genre from building up. "

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate (PDF; 73 kB) of the FSK , accessed on May 28, 2015
  2. ↑ a b c This and that in the IMDb
  3. ^ Reproduction Prohibited
  4. ^ TV quotas , Spiegel Online , December 18, 2006
  5. ↑ The secret window. In: filmstarts.de. Retrieved May 28, 2015 .
  6. ↑ The film starts review of The Secret Window. In: filmstarts.de. Retrieved May 28, 2015 .
  7. ↑ The secret window. In: cinema.de. Retrieved May 28, 2015 .
  8. ↑ The secret window. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
Films and TV series based on works by Stephen King are based
Movies

Carrie - Des Satan's Youngest Daughter (1976) • Burning Must Salem (1979) • Shining (1980) • Cujo (1983) • Dead Zone (1983) • Christine (1983) • Children of Wrath (1984) • The Fire Devil (1984) • Devil's Gift (1984) • Werewolf from Tarker Mills (1985) • Cat's Eye (1985) • Stand by Me - The Secret of a Summer (1986) • Rhea M - It Started Without Warning (1986) • Running Man (1987) • Stuffed Animal Cemetery (1989) • Tales from the Shadow World (1990) • Night Shift (1990) • Misery (1990) • Stephen King's It (1990) • Sometimes They Come Back (1991) • Stuffed Animal Cemetery II ( 1992) • Children of Wrath 2 - Deadly Harvest (1992) • The Lawnmower Man (1992) • Sleepwalker (1992) • Tommyknockers (1993) • Stephen Kings Stark (1993) • In a Small Town (1993) • The Condemned (1994) • Stephen King's The Stand (1994) • Children of Wrath 3 - The Chicago Massacre (1995) • The Langoliers (1995) • Dolores (1995) • The Mangler (199 5) • Thinner (1996) • Children of Wrath IV - Murderous Cult (1996) • Sometimes They Come Again II (1996) • Stephen King's Quicksilver Highway (1997) • Trucks - Out of Control (1997) • Quicksilver Highway (1997) • The Shining (1997) • Stephen King's The Night Flier (1997) • The Model Student (1998) • Children of Wrath 5 - Field of Terror (1998) • Children of Wrath 6 - Isaac's Return (1999) • The Storm of the Century (1999) • The Green Mile (1999) • The Mangler 2 (2001) • Hearts in Atlantis (2001) • Children of the Corn: Revelation (2001) • Fire Devil - The Return (2002) • Carrie (2002) • Stephen King's House of Doom (2002) • Dreamcatcher (2003) • Salem's Lot - Burning Must Salem (2004) • The Secret Window (2004) • Riding the Bullet (2004) • Desperation (2006) • Room 1408 (2007) • The Nebel (2007) • Dolan's Cadillac (2009) • Children of the Corn (2009) • Everything's Eventual (2009) • Children of Anger: Genesis - The Beginning (2011) • Willa (2013) • Carrie (2013) • Stephen King's a Good Marriage (2014) • Mercy - The Devil Knows No Mercy (2014) • Big Driver (2014) • Willa (short film) (2015) • Pulse (2016) • The Dark Tower (2017) • 1922 (2017 ) • The Game (2017) • It (2017) • The Doctor's Case (2018) • Mute (2018) • Cemetery of Stuffed Animals (2019) • It Chapter 2 (2019) • In the Tall Grass (2019) • Doctor Sleeps Awakening ( 2019)

TV Shows

Kingdom Hospital (2004) • Salem's Lot (2004) • Stephen King's Nightmares (2006) • Haven (2010–2015) • Stephen King's Bag of Bones (2011) • Under the Dome (2013–2015) • 11.22. 63 - The Attack (2016) • The Fog (2017) • Mr. Mercedes (2017) • Castle Rock (2018)