I’ve been waiting for 100 Feet to appear on my video store shelves for a good long while now, folks—ever since I read about this one I knew, KNEW!, that it was going to be an intensely wild ride. And with a major name like Famke Janssen involved, well, it wasn’t like things could get much better!
I wondered how, at all, it could even be possible to not be enthused about this beyond all belief, and so, when I finally caught a glimpse of it on the shelves, I had to lay claim. I had to get my hands on a copy because I’d been waiting for it for MONTHS.
Sadly, it would not live up to my expectations.
First, the plot: it’s a simple enough sort of plot, with a woman recently convicted of murdering her own husband, who a surprisingly large body of evidence suggests beat her on a regular basis. Clearly, a jury went along with the self-defense idea because she’s sentenced to an entire year of home detention and placed on an ankle monitoring bracelet, the kind you saw in Disturbia. Now, when you can’t even go into the basement of your own home without setting off an alarm, you know you’ve got some serious problems. But things get worse when we discover that there’s plenty wrong with the house she’s required by law to remain inside. Power failures…a really poorly located mail slot…easily opened basement windows…these are just part of the list. Oh, yeah…and the flying crockery. It seems that our valiant widow is living in a haunted house—haunted by the ghost of her murdered husband.
And hubby ain’t happy.
With a buildup like that you might wonder how I could ever possibly be less than happy with this one, but I can’t bring myself to love it. The problem, as is so often the case with a movie that has an excellent concept but still manages to disappoint, is in the execution. First off, Famke Janssen has a LOT to do in this movie, and to be perfectly honest she doesn’t have the horror chops. Oh, sure, she’s done plenty of acting work before, and maybe in an action flick or a suspense title or a romantic comedy she’d do all right, but horror’s a totally different animal and it’s clear it’s not an animal she’s familiar with. They had a great idea here with the ghost of the ex-husband and all, but they didn’t run with it near as hard as they should have, instead counting on Famke to hold up the movie. They counted on her entirely too much and it shows.
Oh, sure, it’s all right—it’s just nowhere near as good as it could have been. Nowhere near as good as it SHOULD have been, in all honesty. That’s what hurts the most about 100 Feet—there’s a great idea here that just wasn’t explored to the fullest. They could have done something really scary here, and as it sits, it’s merely half-baked. 100 Feet just can’t go the distance.
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creejay said
May 4 2009 @ 4:31 pm
i disagree- I think Famke was pretty much the only redeeming quality of the film and she holds it together. There are a couple of weak points in her performance, but any film where there is pretty much only one character on screen for the entire film there are going to be flaws. I thought she brought a good physicality to her role (though she looks pretty clumsy and a little gawky) and delivered in the dramatic scenes. Her scream could use some work though!
Steve Anderson said
May 5 2009 @ 2:07 pm
Creejay–that was my big problem with it. She’s not an experienced horror actress. She really doesn’t understand the conventions and such, and even as you say, her scream is off. How can a scream queen be a scream queen when she herself can’t scream? Oh, sure, she was GOOD, but not good enough to pin an entire movie on. What they needed was more ghost, less Famke.