Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.
Say what you will about Sam Neill, but this is a guy who doesn’t shy away from some screwed up movies. Between Possesssion, Event Horizon, and Sleeping Dogs, this is a guy not afraid of going to some dark places when the movie calls for it. Dead Calm isn’t as dark or as weird as some of his other movies, but it’s a pretty dark tale. This is also fairly early in Nicole Kidman’s career, years before her face was Botoxed taut. It also features Billy Zane as a bad guy on a boat nearly a decade before he was a bad guy on a boat in Titanic.
The premise is simple, and comes with the pedigree of having been based on the same story that Orson Welles started filming in the late 1960s. Like many a good thriller, it’ also decidedly simple. We start in the cruelest way possible. Australian Naval officer John Ingram (Sam Neill) returns to port to see his wife Rae (Nicole Kidman) who has just been in a terrible car accident that has killed their toddler son. Thanks, movie!
