Too Many Open Windows – TADFF Review

Open Windows (2014) dir. Nacho Vigalondo

Open Windows. Wow. Hm. Where should I start. Julie Andrews says the beginning is a very good place to start but then again she dresses children in curtains so what does she know. She’d probably already have a lovely little song composed about this movie and here I am struggling to put a review together. Dammit, Julie Andrews.

It’s not that I didn’t like Open Windows, it’s just that, okay, fine, I didn’t like Open Windows. I wanted to, though. I went in all psyched about seeing a film by the director of Timecrimes (a movie I’ve heard amazing things about but still have yet to see) and left incredibly confused. And a little wary of my laptop. And Al Gore’s The Internet. I think the most frustrating thing is that Open Windows did not fail for me out of laziness or an inability to craft an interesting story–the complete opposite in fact. The story and execution are so ambitious it bogs everything down to the point it felt like a particularly bad episode of SVU (and I lovveeee me some SVU). Here is where I would put in a pun about the all of those open browser windows slowing everything down but I won’t because I respect you all, and myself (mostly just myself) too much.

Hi, I’m Elijah Wood and I’m going to be spending this entire movie at this level of confusion or higher. Enjoy.

Open Windows starts off simply enough: an unassuming dude named Nick (Elijah Wood) is in Austin because he won a contest to have dinner with his favourite movie star, Jill Goddard (Sasha Grey), who is in town promoting her film at Fantastic Fest (ha). He’s your regular hard-working #1 Jill Goddard Fan Site moderator, no big deal. Immediately things start to get strange when a man calls his computer to tell him that Jill Goddard canceled their dinner. We can tell something isn’t right because this mysterious guy doesn’t seem to be affiliated with Jill at all, only goes by “Chord,” and has the most distinctive, untrustworthy Yorkshire accent in ever. (Ding, ding, ding, danger Will Robinson.) Also he hacks Jill’s phone and gives Nick access because Nick “deserves it” and forces Nick to go along with what at first appears to be a crazy plan to spy on Jill and watch her have sex with someone. Except pretty soon Nick is stun-gunning strangers and running from the law. If that wasn’t crazy enough, some weird glowing eyes also pop onto Nick’s computer screen to say hi and I was all, “Whoa, are those aliens hacking his computer too?” Except they turned out to just be French. Anyway.

LOOKIT ALL THOSE OPEN WINDOWS.

At this point it’s important to mention that the entire movie played out on computer screens. Maybe you’re all, “Um, what?” and I would have agreed with you before seeing this movie but that was the best part of the entire thing, actually. Jumping seamlessly from webcams to surveillance cameras to maps to technology I can’t even begin to describe (probably because it doesn’t actually exist), Open Windows was incredibly entertaining to watch. There’s probably a commentary there on how we’ve become so used to watching stories play out on screens… Meh.  Still, it was so well done that it’s a shame the rest of the movie was so absurd.

It’s not that I don’t buy a person’s ability to get drawn into doing something awful against their will. The chilling Compliance (2012) was based on a similar, but true, story (one that SVU also used, because of course they did, in a particularly great, outrageous episode guest-starring Robin Williams). And we all want to sit here and believe we wouldn’t be so easily duped into doing terrible things just because someone with authority told us to but, sorry kids, that isn’t the case. So I am all on-board with believing Nick would find himself feeling painted into a corner and have to do whatever Chord tells him to except the rest of the plot points and the five million (give or take) crazy twists that follow make it impossible.

Sorry, he’s gonna need some arrows to help with “turn left down the hallway.”

To make the outrageous story even worse, we were bombarded with the characters explaining their every move each step of the way. That’s called “exposition,” kids, and sometimes it can be executed cleverly to help the audience along or it could be Chord using arrows to show Nick how to hide something under the bed. No, I’m serious. He’s all, “Hide this stuff under the bed! Follow the arrows!” and then some arrows show up on screen pointing to, you guessed it, under the bed. Oof. And then there’s the French kids (don’t ask), who thought Nick was the mysterious Nevada (the Banksy of the hacking world… actually, don’t ask) and were helping Nick track Chord and despite the visual of the GPS tracker on screen we still needed dialogue to help us along. At least nobody said “enhance” the entire movie. Although, now that I think about it, I kind of wish someone had.

Yeah, can we just enhance this. Great.

Open Windows had everything going for it–an interesting execution and a potentially haunting story concept and a hobbit–but its lack of subtlety, and also common sense, make it too frustrating to really consider a success. Did I enjoy it enough to laugh throughout? Of course I did, but I don’t think I was supposed to… Something something terrible computer running slow pun something something.

Toronto After Dark runs until October 24th. Check out the rest of the amazing upcoming films and buy some tickets if you haven’t yet. Jabrones.