Al spoils Secret Window

Fight Club delivered the goods on the ultimate “unreliable narrator” story. Secret Window delivered something else.

I don’t even like to call it Secret Window; I like to call it The Shining Redux. “Redrum” worked because (1) the creepy kid kept seeing this obscure word in his creepy visions, (2) tension slowly increased until the memorable pay-off, and (3) whether it had been done cinematically before or not, there was something about that scene that made you feel like you had never seen it before. Secret Window’s comparable “shooter” scene did not work because (1) there was nothing obscure about the word when we’re led to believe it is the antagonist’s name, (2) the revelation was essentially forced down our gullets at the top of the last ten minutes of the movie, sans slow-build, and (3) we know going into the movie that it is based on a Stephen King novella, so there was something about that scene that gave you a strong sense of deja-vu. In fact the only difference between the climactic scene in Secret Window and the climactic scene in The Shining is that the husband is stalking the wife down the stairs instead of up them.