Directed by: Adrian Lyne
Starring: Tim Robbins, Elizabeth Peña, Danny Aiello
This was kind of a neat psychological thriller. It even did a good enough job keeping the plot going in between the crazy parts that it all flowed together really well. Hell, I didn’t even really mind all the jumping back and forth in time that this movie does, and usually I hate that shit. I can see how this was one of the inspirations for the Silent Hill series.
Tim Robbins is a guy who had a really bad experience in Vietnam, his platoon was attacked and it was a bloody massacre. He keeps having terrible nightmares, sometimes involving his dead wife and kids, sometimes involving horrible monsters coming out of nowhere, sometimes he’s just in a hospital which seems like hell. When he finds out that the rest of his remaining squad knows about this, he tries to contact the army to see what’s up, but finds that they apparently never even made it to ‘Nam, and he’s out to find what really happened.
The plot is a little… tepid. And very predictable. However, the scenes of the crazy shit happening are basically worth watching the thing by themselves. Apparently this film pioneered that now common horror movie technique of having people’s heads shake around really fast and it’s weird. So… that’s neat, anyway. And again, they actually do the whole flashing back and forth idea well, because from our main character’s point of view, it’s still linear. Anyway, I thought it was all right.
Films in Boxes 
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