Secret Window

Secret Window
Secret Window film poster
Directed by	David Koepp
Produced by	Gavin Polone Ezra Swerdlow
Written by	Stephen King (novel), David Koepp
Starring	Johnny Depp John Turturro Maria Bello Timothy Hutton
Music by	Philip Glass Geoff Zanelli
Cinematography	Fred Murphy
Editing by	Jill Savitt
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	March 12, 2004
Running time	96 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	US$40,000,000
Box office	$92,913,171 (worldwide)

Secret Window is a 2004 psychological horror film starring Johnny Depp and John Turturro. It was written and directed by David Koepp, based on the novella Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King, featuring a musical score by Philip Glass and Geoff Zanelli. The story appeared in King's collection Four Past Midnight. The film was released on March 12, 2004, by Columbia Pictures.

Plot

Successful author Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp) suffers a psychotic break when he catches his wife, Amy (Maria Bello) having an affair. He procrastinates finalizing the divorce by retreating to his secluded cabin in the rural town of Tashmore Lake in upstate New York. Depressed and suffering from writer's block, Mort is confronted one day by the mysterious John Shooter (John Turturro), a Mississippi dairy farmer who accuses him of plagiarism. Shooter leaves his manuscript "Sowing Season" which he alleges was copied. Mort dismisses Shooter as mentally ill and throws the book away, but his cleaning lady digs it out of the trash and presents it back to him. With his curiosity piqued, Mort reads the story and is surprised to discover its resemblance to his own story "Secret Window".

During his walk the following day, Mort is accosted by Shooter when he explains his story was published years before Shooter's existed. He is given a three-day ultimatum by Shooter to provide the proof. That night, Mort finds Chico, his Australian Cattle Dog, stabbed to death with a screwdriver in his neck. Mort immediately suspects Shooter and reports the incident to Sheriff Newsome (Len Cariou), who reacts with little enthusiasm. Mort then drives to his house where his estranged wife Amy is living to obtain a copy of the book and stews outside as he watches her leave with her new lover Ted Milner (Timothy Hutton). In New York City, Mort hires private investigator Ken Karsch (Charles S. Dutton), who travels to Tashmore Lake to watch over the cabin and to interview Tom Greenleaf (John Dunn Hill), the only witness to Mort and Shooter's conversation. Amy later calls saying their house was burned down, consequently destroying the copy of the book to prove his case against Shooter. He begins to suspect Ted of hiring Shooter to harass him because of their shared animosity towards one another.

Shooter shows up again, this time demanding Mort fix the story's ending, and Mort feigns agreement. Mort is perplexed to find his Jeep Cherokee idling in his driveway (with Pall Mall cigarette butts smoldering in the ashtray) the next morning when he leaves for his appointment with Ken. He shows up late to the diner where they planned to meet, but learns from a cashier that Ken never showed up at all. Back at the cabin, Mort receives a call from Shooter requesting a private meeting in the woods and when he arrives he finds Ken and Tom dead in Tom's truck. Shooter indicates he has implicated Mort in the murders, requiring Mort to cover up the crime by running the truck into a water-filled stone quarry.

Mort orders a copy of the magazine with his published story and picks it up at the post office. When he arrives home with the magazine he opens it to find that the specific pages containing the story have been cut out. Mort's "inner voice" tells him that since the magazine was in a sealed package, Shooter couldn't have tampered with it. Prompting from his own conscience leads Mort to realize that Shooter is merely a figment of his imagination; brought to life through Mort's dissociative identity disorder and created to carry out malevolent tasks like killing Chico and burning down the house.

Just as Mort comes to realize his psychosis, Amy coincidentally arrives to get his signature to finalize the divorce settlement. She finds the cabin disheveled, with the word "shooter" carved throughout and suspects Mort's drinking as the cause. Mort suddenly reveals himself and Amy is struck by fear when she spots a carving explaining that "shooter" actually implies Mort's desire to "shoot her." Mort, now wearing Shooter's hat and speaking with a southern accent, chases Amy outside to her car and stabs her in the ankle to prevent her from leaving. Ted arrives shortly afterwards and Amy watches helplessly as Mort ambushes and beheads him with a shovel. Mort then recites the ending in Shooter's version of the story as he murders Amy.

With Amy and Ted dead, Mort recovers from his writer's block and becomes less reclusive, even though he is now the town pariah, a fact he seems blissfully unaware of despite obvious rebuffs. Newsome stops by the cabin to advise Mort he is the prime suspect of Amy and Ted's disappearance and will be arrested once the bodies are found, but Mort nonchalantly dismisses the threat. Newsome leaves and Mort again recites the "perfect" ending to his story as he dines on an ear of fresh corn from his garden, hinting that Amy and Ted's bodies are buried in the ground beneath the corn crops, and that the corn is breaking down the nutrients from the bodies so they will decompose and the police will never find them.

Cast

• Johnny Depp as Mort Rainey
• John Turturro as John Shooter
• Maria Bello as Amy Rainey
• Timothy Hutton as Ted Milner
• Len Cariou as Sheriff Dave Newsome
• Charles S. Dutton as Private Investigator Ken Karsch
• John Dunn Hill as Tom Greenleaf

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a rating of 46% based on 157 reviews. On Metacritic, the movie has a score of 46 (mixed or average reviews) out of 100. Roger Ebert awarded it three stars out of a possible four, stating that "[Secret Window] could add up to a straight-faced thriller about things that go boo in the night, but Johnny Depp and director David Koepp ... have too much style to let that happen." He continues by noting that "[t]he story is more entertaining as it rolls along than it is when it gets to the finish line. But at least King uses his imagination right up to the end, and spares us the obligatory violent showdown that a lesser storyteller would have settled for." On the other hand, Ian Nathan from Empire magazine only awarded the film 2 stars out of a possible 5, stating that "The presence of the sublime Depp will be enough to get Secret Window noticed, but even his latest set of rattling eccentricities is not enough to energise this deadbeat parlour trick." It was a modest box office success, succeeding at recouping its budget of $40,000,000 with a worldwide gross of $92,000,000.

Side notes

Part of the movie was filmed in the town of North Hatley, Quebec in the Eastern Townships approximately two hours south east of Montreal.^{[citation needed]}

Timothy Hutton played a dual role in another movie based on Stephen King's book The Dark Half, which is similarly about a writer that gradually realizes his pseudonymed alter ego has come to life, with homicidal results.

See also

• List of films featuring mental illness

External links

• Secret Window at the Internet Movie Database
• Secret Window at AllRovi
• Secret Window at Rotten Tomatoes
• Secret Window at Metacritic
• Secret Window at Box Office Mojo