He works a lot in this corner of no-budget filmdom, and generally the films don’t do him any favors, or vice versa. Bentley has morphed into a version of Jake Gyllenhaal who doesn’t elicit excitement or empathy. But “Amnesiac” takes a good 30 minutes to get past a dull, quiet and forlorn prologue to set us up for what it might deliver, but pretty much doesn’t. The look is hazy, a film shot in the washed-out colors and gauzy light of eight millimeter filmed home movies. There’s little mystery to the spoiler alerts here. Another hint, check out that studio-provided still photo. Is she who she says she is, or is this something more sinister? Hint, she keeps sedating him. There are flickers of old home movies, and clues litter the setting and his mind. Or the memories she flings at him, “kissing me by the creek. He’s got “temporary memory loss,” she tells him. “I’m your wife, and I’m gonna make you all better!” And there’s this woman standing over him. The man awakens in a hospital bed in what looks like a darkened, empty ballroom. A daughter (Olivia Rose Keegan) was involved. There was a car accident, and judging from the car, it happened in the pre-seatbelt ’60s. That’s what we call her, “Woman.” And him (Wes Bentley)? “Man.” The pretty but almost-always monotonous Bosworth stars as a woman caring for a man who has just come out of a coma. As the movie rolls on, we see glimpses of her temper when challenged, and for an actress like Bosworth, this was fun to see her in a Kathy Bates-like role, but in the same context, she’s always been the cutie-pie in the movies, and it honestly took a while to recognize her in the guise of a controlling head-case with a penchant for violence.The once-promising Michael Polish of the once-promising Polish Brothers (“North Fork”) directed his wife, Kate Bosworth, in “Amnesiac.” And the only memorable thing about this middling thriller is its resemblance to its betters, from “Misery” to “Before I Go to Sleep.” The woman is eerily serene throughout her caretaking activities, and amid questioning him about if he remembers anything, she randomly drops useless nuggets of information in his lap like, “did you know that it costs more to make a bottlecap than the bottle itself?” – thanks for that intriguing tidbit of knowledge, ya kook! The man tries in vain to remember pieces of his life, and the more his mind works, it starts to form the opinion that this sweet, caring, trivia-infused darling of a wife might not be who she claims to be. The man awakens to find out from his wife that he’s suffered a traumatic brain injury, and he’s going to need some serious rest – his initial fear is cemented when he can’t remember who this woman is, or how he ended up in this big ol bed, in this mansion-esque like domicile. In the blink of an eye the threesome has been involved in a violent crash, and we shoot to the man with a massive amount of blood streaming down his face, with no sight of either female in the car…ooh, this is gettin’ good! Bosworth plays a character simply titled as “the woman,” and she is the spouse of “the man” – seems appropriate, doesn’t it? Anyhow, that man in question is portrayed by Wes Bentley, and as the film opens, we see our couple in the front seat of their car, and a teenaged girl (Keegan) in the back seat. In that personal and professional choice, I can say I found it both a refreshing change, and a perplexing one at the same time. Polish chose a lead actress that was as close to him as any other thespian on the planet: his own wife, Kate Bosworth (who also served as an executive producer). Holding the directorial position allows you to make certain choices that can either enhance or detract from the product that you are presenting, and in this case, Mr. From director Michael Polish comes Amnesiac, an interestingly crafted drama/mystery that takes the idea of cranial blackout to a completely terrifying level.
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