Midnight Movie of the Week #184 - Mute Witness

I love being able to call a movie "Hitchcokian" almost as much as I love Hitchcock. Heck, saying a movie is Hitchcockian - which means "feels like a movie Hitchcock would approve of or make himself" in my mind - is my way of saying a movie has made it in this world. In my mind it's like Hitchcock is Roy Hobbs at the end of The Natural and I'm Bobby Savoy and the movie I get to call Hitchcockian is the Savoy Special. That's how awesome I feel when I can say it and mean it, and I don't care if that reference is nearly thirty years old and doesn't fit my blog and may be a little obscure. "Go pick me out a winner, Bobby" is one of the most uplifting movie moments of EVER, and that's how I feel about great Hitchcock clones.

Which brings us to Mute Witness, a 1994 thriller that's full of holes but has this wonderful manic energy that teams with a devilishly playful script to create something twisted that you just know would make Hitch smile. The plot revolves around a young, mute woman who is working as a special effects artist on a Russian horror film and just happens to stumble upon the filming of a snuff film. I don't want to explain what a snuff film is to you innocent readers - I didn't learn about them until I was 17 and my mom took me to see 8mm - but I don't really want you to google it either. So, I'll just go ahead and say that you need to prepare for a sex scene with a murder at the end and leave it at that. Is it uncomfortable to see that? You betcha. Does it ramp up the tension for everything that's going to follow it? Absolutely.

Considering the plot, the film could also draw a viewer's mind to Hitchcock homages made by Brian De Palma like Blow Out and Body Double. Writer/director Anthony Waller doesn't shy away from brutality and bloodletting, but at the same time the film always has that sinister charm that keeps you feeling safe while watching it. If there's one thing that sets a Hitchcock thriller apart from most other films is that there's this perfect balance where you feel in danger while also feeling like you're having fun. It's what I call the roller coaster principle, and Waller - like Hitchcock and De Palma before him - understands that principle.

The key to any good roller coaster movie is that the pace can't follow a formula. There are always going to be ups and downs, but if we get into a rhythm and start to expect them they lose their power over us. Mute Witness gets this. It starts off with a bang - the snuff filming happens way earlier than you would expect to see snuff filming in a movie - and there are a few moments after that shock where the viewer is left wondering if there are any more thrills to be had. Patience will pay off for the viewer, as the film always seems to have something new coming with the next twist.

Russian actress Marina Zudina takes the lead as Billie, the mute special effects girl, and is fantastic throughout the film. Considering the fact that her Wikipedia page discusses her aspirations to be an opera singer and her musical background, I'm going to go ahead and assume she's not mute in real life. But I would never have believed that based on the film - in fact, I've seen it 3 or 4 times and I just now made the connection that she might not be mute and now I feel kind of in shock and it's derailing this whole paragraph. Thanks to Zudina's performance - by far the most polished in the film - Billie is a fun character to be stuck in a mystery with as she comes up with some very unique (and R-rated) ways to interact with her surroundings while not speaking.

The film is also slightly infamous thanks to a cameo from a "Mystery Guest Star" who agreed to speak a handful of lines for the film as long as he wasn't mentioned in the film's advertising. As such, I have chosen not to list his name here - but I will tell you he once built a bridge and at another time used Force. You can look it up on IMDB, but to do so might spoil one of the most overly dramatic reveals in the history of movies. To say that Waller milks this star's presence for all it's worth would be a huge understatement. As the music swells around him and the camera lingers as his faces peeks out from a darkly lit car I half expected Humphrey Bogart to show up as an evil mastermind. (SPOILER ALERT: It's not Humphrey Bogart.)

Mute Witness has some problems - bad acting from the supports and a few lulls between shocks are the biggest of them - but then that sly Hitchcockian/De Palmaesque attitude shows up on the screen and it's nearly impossible to avoid being hooked. This is a high concept thriller full of surprises, a crowd pleasing film that should keep anyone who can find the fun in murder smiling. If nothing else, it should do the same thing a good roller coaster does - distract you from reality and keep you anticipating the next thrill.