An average movie

Even though the critics were rather negative, since it was starring 2 oscar winners (Jessica Lange, Gwyneth Paltrow), I was eager to watch the damned thing. Anyway, it was basically a standard thriller but it was just very slow to take off. I mean, during most of the movie, there was nothing much happening. Furthermore, the ominous music kept coming back from time to time and everytime, they would repeat the very same shot of Jessica Lange giving her evil look. Otherwise, I actually would have had a rather hard time to notice that I was watching a thriller and, in my opinion, the story (which had some potential) was better suited for a psychological drama. The acting was not bad in general, even though Jessica Lange did push it a little but who can blame her? Indeed, most of the actions of her character didn't make much sense which is something unfortunately quite usual in such weak thrillers. As you maye have already guessed, I wasn't really impressed by this movie and it was indeed a rather generic and predictable thriller with many plot-holes. Like I said before, nothing much really happened which I didn't mind but since it was a typical Hollywood thriller, they finished up with this really over-the-top and really badly acted ending. It was apparently supposed to really dramatic but it just sounded so corny. What I found also quite ridiculous with this ending was that they tried to make us believe that Gwyneth Paltrow and her husband didn't have one single conversation after they moved in with the mother-in-law during the whole duration of the movie (Why? Even if their relationship was not doing really good, you would expect them to have at least one decent conversation about their current situation) but in the final 5 minutes, Paltrow spit finally het guts out and her husband swallowed every single word without any hesitation. They could have at least provided some kind of argument, just for the sake of it but, no, it felt as if they were thinkin 'let's wrap it up as quickly as we can'. To conclude, I have seen worse movies and I think that if they had decided to make a pyschological drama about a mentally instable mother-in-law, instead of a standard thriller, it would have worked better. But, unfortunately, it was a rather average Hollywood thriller and, frankly, it is not really worth a look whatsoever.