Customer Reviews

Deadline

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

For one thing, this must have been one of Brittany Murphy's last movies (and in knowing that, she appears to be very ill.) There is a memorable scene where she looks through a glass door and pauses for a moment in closing it, and there is just this very final, haunting look on her face. If you like spooky, morbid, suspenseful thrillers that are more about making you jump than grossing you out with blood and gore, you will love this movie! An author, Alice goes to stay at an old house for one week to write. Her friend, Rebecca drives Alice to the house and takes the car back with her. Later, Rebecca lets Alice know that her violent ex-boyfriend, Ben is out of jail and may be looking for her. Alice begins hearing noises in the house and comes across some videotapes in the attic of a disturbed couple (Lucy and David.) She becomes absorbed in their story. When she finds the last tape and Rebecca tells her that Lucy and David were never found and are considered missing, Alice suddenly realizes that one of them could be in the house. The ending is a bunch of twists and turns that are open to interpretation. Is this all in Alice's mind or did someone (other than Ben) try to kill her? Lucy's story and Alice's parallel each other so closely. Did Alice just create the very real characters of David and Lucy for her next novel? Rebecca and the audience are left wondering. This type of movie reminded me a lot of What Lies Beneath. But the ending is more in the style of Alfred Hitchcock. The background music is exceptional and really pulls you into the story.

"Deadline" is a dark atmospheric thriller, recalling "Skeleton Key" and "A Haunting." Brittany Murphy plays a somewhat young and out-of-sorts artist who moves into a large, empty house with a dark creepy past. She moves there alone, conveniently, to escape a past abusive boyfriend.

ALl goes well for a few hours, then strange noises begin to happen. Objects move about with no explanation. Video footage of the young couple who once lived in the house is found by Murphy in the attic of the house. It is eventually revealed in flashbacks that there was some sinister activities in the house in the years that had passed. Surprise!! The 'twist' in the end is not much of a twist at all, and Murphy looks spaced out and dazed throughout the film (kind of how she looked in "Don't say a Word," only a decade or so older.) Needless to say, this role is no stretch for Murphy.

Thora Birch is creepy and believable as the ghost woman in the flashbacks, and her performance creates an eerie, tense mood that make the film a worthwhile rental for fans of this genre, but not much more.

I didn't go into this movie expecting much considering the cover and it seemed the same as a million other ghost movies I have seen in the past 10 years. Throughout viewing this movie I was dissappointed and entralled.

Brittany Murphy plays as a screenwriter who has just moved into a creepy, old mansion to complete her new script. The movie is filled with odd sounds and bumps in the night, which was glorified in the original Shirley Jackson classic, "The Haunting".

About less than midway in the film Murphy finds a collection of home videos of the previous owners. Of course she watches her find and becomes obsessed. On tape is the documentation of a disgruntled married couple, played by Thora Birch and Marc Blucas. Quickly, she discovers there are frightening similarities between Thora and herself. Brittany discovers later that Thora is murdered and her ghost still haunts the estate.

At first, this movie moves like an Asian horror film, its creepy and almost poetic with its style, however, theres only one problem. There is a scene where Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is playing, Murphy follows the music and sees dead Thora Birch playing the piano, instead of Birch slowly turning to face Murphy the scene becomes loud and obnoxious with poor cgi effects. The result was a cheap scare that lacked a jump. In this one specific scene I have listed two facts that annoyed me. 1. The director went for a poor scare tactic vs. the ghost slowly turning and facing Murphy. 2. PLEASE FORGET CGI WHEN SOMETHING IS SIMPLE *as in Thora's deathly makeup* BE CREATIVE AND USE OLD SCHOOL EFECTS! If Dick Smith could shock millions with makeup and latex what is stopping Hollywood now?

Instead of giving up on the movie, I watched it till the end and the twist was redeeming. I snagged this in the $5 bend at Walmart and feel it was worth that amount of money. This movie is rated R, which I believe is a bogus rating, this is clearly no worse than a PG-13 rated film. This movie is without gore or any major or minor scare factors, but it is an interesting watch. Out of a scale of 1 to 10, I rate it a 6 1/2. The only thing that prevented the movie from reaching a higher number is the Moonlight Sonata scene that frustrated me.

***** spoiler alert (maybe)******

Whoever called this a man-hating movie didn't watch it through to the end (or else didn't understand it). It is really more of a psychological thriller about sanity and the blending of reality and imagination. I was unsure until the very end what was really going on (which makes me happy as so many movies are too easy to see through). I found it spooky and interesting. I won't say any more as I don't want to spoil it for others who like having to figure things out.....

OK - I have watched a TON of movies in my time however, I am embarrased to say I do not seem to be 'getting' what seems to be SO obvious to other's about this flick.
It seemed to be a great movie(until the end) now I'm left stumped as to what this supposed 'twist' is! - I just can't put it together this time!
It would be REALLY great if someone gave me some "spoiler" comment's so I too can see what is so obvious to others. It's driving me CRAZY!
There are couple of 'incident's' in the movie that the 'friend' acknowledge's that seems to puzzle her too!
Glad I'm not the only one!

I loved this movie! Brittany Murphy is a very good actress and so sad she died so very young. This movie was great suspense and very creepy. I remember Thora B. as the little girl in so many movies and it is odd to see her as an older woman...Anyway..I would recommend this movie very highly..

"Deadline" is a really bad movie. One of the last films of Brittany Murphy's career really sucked. One thing I noticed about this movie is that she looked like a drug addict or a really sick person in it, so you could tell that she was in bad health. The plotline was pretty good and it seems like a movie that would have a couple good scares, but it's really nothing. You get excited for nothing. It's a straight-to-DVD movie, so you can't really expect anything great in the first place, but this really just wasn't good. Nothing really creepy happens until about 30 minutes, and the scares are so minimal, and not in a good way. It might as well be a PG movie. The plotline suddenly grows boring as the story of the couple who used to live there climaxes. Near the end, you're basically still bored because it becomes really predictable and the ending confused me for a bit after I saw it, although I did get the whole ending later. You have to think about it a bit afterwards, and that's the only good thing about. Altogether, you should skip "Deadline".

This is a dark,scary movie starring the late actress Brittany Murphy as Alice in "Deadline". Alice is a struggling author who is recovering from psychological breakdown, needs inspiration to finish her screenplay in time against a fast approaching "Deadline"! She stays in a spooky victorian mansion in the middle of nowhere, but things start to happen : strange noises, creaky doors, moving furniture & other paranormal things which make her mind to run wild! This is a slowly evolving scary movie that also features Thora Birch & Sean McConville, will thrill "ghost/spooky" story loving fans.The story has a good plot, but the story rather develops slowly & intruiging at the same time.

Brittany Murphy is Alice, a screenwriter moving to an old, abandoned house in order to finish her work. Though her concerned friend Rebecca (Tammy Blanchard) doesn't seem to like the idea, Alice intends to live in this lonely place alone for a week. Then a string of creepy incidents happens to her. Moreover, Alice discovers a video camera and lots of tapes in the house, recording the life of a loving couple Lucy (Thora Birch) and David (Marc Blucas).

Umm, this sounds a bit familiar, doesn't it? "Deadline" is not very scary with clichéd scare tactics (like shadows moving across the screen) and a pretty predictable storyline. One unique narrative device is the videotapes that connect the two threads of stories, one about Brittany Murphy's Alice and the other about Thora Birch's Lucy. The supernatural setting and the subsequent interaction between the past and the present might have worked with more interesting characters we can relate to, and more smooth and convincing character development.

The production design of the creepy house is decent, and so are the performances from the leading ladies Murphy and Birch, but the concept of "documenting" someone's own behaviors is stretched too far, and it begins to look ridiculous in the second half of the film.

I like Brittany Murphy, who tragically passed away last year, and Thora Birch, who was so good in "Ghost World." My two stars go to these players who deserve a better movie.

This was a watchable movie that had kind of an interesting idea, but turned to overused plot devices and a 'twist' at the end that has been used numerous times already. Brittany Murphy seemed like a zombie in this movie. Thora Birch did a nice job as the ghost wife. The entire film was slow and just seemed to drag and the continued use of the hand held video camera is getting so overused it is becoming a joke. Who really documents stuff like that anyway? I read another reviewer saying that Thora Birch does a lot of 'man hater' movies. This wasn't a man hater movie. Yes, there was a man in it who you were expected to dislike, but I don't think they tried to portray him as the 'everyman.' I think the best part of this movie for me was spotting the glaring inconsistency with continuity. From the time Thora Birch is tied to a chair to the time she gets into the tub to the time she gets out, she manages to put on an article of clothing from the chair to the tub then remove it before getting out of the tub. Anyway, the bottom line is that I did not care for this film but it's not the worst movie I've ever seen. Some of the plot devices are old but if you haven't seen a lot of movies they could pass as original and entertaining. This is for sure not one I would buy.