This is what happens when you try to look smarter than you are
"Surveillance" starts so promising... its a pretty raw movie and from the obscure opening on to the landscape shots, introduction of the characters until the unfolding of the stories begins its interesting while not using any music or effects or whatever. Basically the movie is about a couple of FBI agents who are interrogating three survivors of a bloody crime and trying to find out what happened. The way the story is told through the eyes of the different survivors who all got something to hide and therefore all tell different stories while the real occurrences are shown is really interesting and tense. The characters, especially the twisted corrupt cops, the little girl and the drug-addict are also great and everyone in that backwoods police station where the interrogations take place delivers. Funny thing is... to me the 2 FBI agents are the least interesting although they are the main characters.So the whole story is unfolding, interweaving different points of views and everyone being suspicious, the crime is even shown in a pretty brutal way and the movie has a strange nihilistic feeling to it right until the bleak closing shot. Especially the way how the corrupt cops act out somehow really got to me.
But then in its most important part, the final resolution of the story they go for a twist of the most idiotic kind...
SPOILER ALERT:
The FBI agents are the killers and the whole movie was just a kind of sick mind game. Yeah, pretty smart... problem is that nothing makes any sense at all. You don't get explanations to why they make such a big hassle of interrogating everyone for hours just to kill them in the end and having some strange sexual pleasure of it. Sure, the real FBI agents are found dead in a hotel room and identified by their badges, but how the hell our 2 smartasses identified themselves as FBI agents? How did they learn to set up and operate their interrogation surveillance equipment and why does the little girl only tell her secrets to the most demented people around... first the cops after harassing her family, then the killer who killed her family. No explanation in any of the actions of her or her family. Its just a bad twist turning the whole movie upside down and leaving you with a total mess of a story that looked so promising when you didn't yet know what was happening.
Until the last quarter I really liked "Surveillance", then i started to hate it. I guess that still makes it a clean average movie...
score 5/10
dschmeding 1 December 2008
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1983730/35634
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