Photographer and director Cindy Sherman has obviously always been interested in film. Her well-known Untitled Film Stills, from movies that don't exist--pregnant scenes that seem as though they are in medias res but are really staged--feature diverse characters who, upon closer examination, prove to be Sherman herself, every time. Her 1998 film debut, Office Killer, takes her postmodern playfulness with such narrative frames out of the equation--and leaves us with something more flatly macabre and less subtle than Sherman's other work. Here, Carol Kane plays Dorine, a mousy, lonely, and introverted copyeditor for a consumer publication. Think for a moment what kind of person a copyeditor must be: this is the person whose job, whose passion, it is to know exactly where the apostrophe goes and to know the difference between effect and affect. The pressure can get to you.
Tyrannized at home by a domineering mother and tyrannized at work by backstabbing coworkers, downsizing, and newfangled computers, Dorine finds that the copy she cleans up is her only pleasure in life. As pressure builds and builds--Kane's performance exhibits amazing mastery of body language--Dorine finally caves and steps into an insanity that, in a horrifying, animalian fashion, has its own pleasantness and reason. Despite Kane's strong acting here, she is supported by flattish performances from Molly Ringwald, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and Barbara Sukowa.
It is unclear if Sherman means to serve or redefine the concept of narrative through this emotional detachment she brings to the screen. Certainly, this isn't a conventional film, and its cinematography and innovative story are indeed attention-keeping, even entertaining, on a horror-flick level at least. If her goal is to serve narrative canonically, then she fails almost miserably. If her goal is to redefine narrative, then she may have achieved something here that most critics aren't clueing into. It's just unclear what this achievement is. --Erik J. Macki
Favorite screen stars Jeanne Tripplehorn (MICKEY BLUE EYES, SLIDING DOORS), Carol Kane (THE PALLBEARER, ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES), and Molly Ringwald (TEACHING MRS. TINGLE, BETSY'S WEDDING) head a great cast in this campy and darkly hilarious thriller! Dorine (Kane) is a quiet and hardworking social outcast who has endured years of abuse as the office doormat. Then one day, this mild-mannered paper pusher accidentally electrocutes one particularly obnoxious coworker ... and in the process, completely short-circuits her already unstable sanity! From that moment on, Dorine comes to believe that any office mate can be her best friend -- once they're dead! An outrageous display of the creepier side of office politics -- Dimension Home Video is pleased to bring you an unusually entertaining motion picture that's destined to kill you with comedy!
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