Wears its influences...a little too heavily on its sleeve. But it does effectively convey a lingering sense of dread that can't be easily dismissed.
Comment
04/18/08
Anamorph (2008)
24
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:25
Fresh:6
Rotten:19
Average Rating:4.5/10
Consensus: Thin on plot but heavy on academic references, Anamorph proves more derivative than terrifying.
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Willem Dafoe (THE ENGLISH PATIENT) plays an NYPD detective who grapples with a string of unusual serial murders, perpetrated by a killer who fashions himself an artist. As the detective... [More]
Starring: Willem Dafoe, Scott Speedman, Peter Stormare, Clea DuVall
Director: H.S. Miller
Reviews for Anamorph
Top CriticThe atmosphere created by director H.S. Miller is gothic, tortured, stylized yet tinged with a classicist's sense of composition, symmetry and, yes, perspective.
04/18/08
The serial killer in Anamorph shows promise, even if some of his best moves are derivative. The same is true of the film’s director.
04/18/08
Top CriticWeirdly positioning serial killing as a depraved form of creative expression and the victims as signature works of art, Anamorph has the odd effect of simultaneous repulsion and fascination.
04/27/08
A visual treat for Dafoe fans that goes well beyond the conventional horror genre into questions of reality and fantasy and how, or if, we tell the difference.
05/10/08
Sure, it's better than 88 Minutes [what isn't?] but it's still pretty pointless, with unclear exposition and murky plot developments.
05/01/08
A movie about a premise that metamorphoses into twaddle.
04/21/08
This serial killer movie is nothing but a copycat.
04/18/08
Anamorph dances around ponderous issues and grotesque scenery but fails to really engage, startle or disturb.
06/19/08
Director/co-writer H.S. Miller just lays on the chilly blues and a wet-blanket mood of arty anguish, leaving cinematographer Fred Murphy and production designer Jackson De Govia to trump up trompe l'oeils of carefully posed carrion.
04/16/08
The long shadow of David Fincher's Seven falls on Anamorph, a moody, ultimately unexciting thriller.
04/18/08
An academic thriller likely to engage only avid collectors of serial-killer flicks.
04/18/08
No more interesting than any standard episode of "CSI" or any of the other myriad of cop-centric whodunits polluting our airwaves.
12/04/08
Compelling as it often is, Anamorph feels positively cloddish next to David Fincher’s Seven or Zodiac, with which it shares a fondness for shadowy rooms and dimly lit obsessions.
04/17/08
Though this snuff flick takes its title from an asexual stage of reproduction in the life of a fungus, don't expect to find any fungi, I mean fun guys, in this lame excuse for graphic displays of vivisection.
04/16/08
On a scale of one to Se7en, Miller's doomed rip barely rates.
04/18/08
A serial-killer flick told like an art lecture, Anamorph manages to be gruesome yet dull.
04/18/08
The unfortunate fact is that it's more than a little dull when it isn't preposterous.
04/18/08
A grimy, ugly film about death and the living dead in New York City, without the redeeming ambition of Seven or even the cultural commentary of Summer of Sam.
04/16/08
Suspense is something foreign to Anamorph.
04/16/08
Latest News for Anamorph
January 17, 2009:
EMarketingMag.com: Weirdly positioning serial killing as a depraved form of creative expression and the victims as signature works of art, Anamorph has the odd effect of simultaneous repulsion and fascination. 
More...
December 18, 2008:
Weirdly positioning serial killing as a depraved form of creative expression and the victims as signature works of art, Anamorph has the odd effect of simultaneous repulsion and fascination.
More...
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