Robin Williams goes crazy creepy stalker guy on a kid and a blind woman…and he’s the normal one. The Night Listener never quite achieves its goals. Still there’s some interesting parts, performances, and mysteries that might be worth a look if you’re a fan of thrillers. I can’t quite recommend it, but I won’t tell you to stay away.
The Night Listener
2 & 1/2 Stars
The greatest flaw in The Night Listener is how it blows a good setup and, in the end, never becomes the film it desires to be, or could have been. But where most thrillers these days are blood n’ guts slasher films, it is nice to see a psychological thriller, even if it goes off the deep end.
Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams) is a famous radio personality whose world is crumbling around him. His lover Jess (Bobby Cannavale) has moved out, tired of having their relationship mined for fodder on Gabriel’s show. It’s at this point Gabriel’s agent gives him a manuscript to read by a dying young boy named Pete (Rory Culkin).
Pete’s story tells of his molestation by the hands of his parents and their friends (complete with creepy, and totally unnecesary, flashbacks shown in dark grainy footage). After reading the manuscript and learning of Pete’s poor health Gabriel begins a telephone relationship with Pete and Donna (Toni Collette), the woman who takes care of him.
As weeks go by small inconsistencies and questions about Pete and Donna begin to fester in Gabriel’s mind and he begins to wonder if he is the victim of a hoax. Unable to let it go, Gabriel begins a journey to find if Pete and Donna are real. What he finds are more questions than answers.
The film has a good set-up but no real sense of realization, resolution, or completion. Once Gabriel’s travels begin, the story takes a sharp left-turn into crazywackofunland. He starts behaving erratically and engaging in behavior that defies the logic and sense of the man from the first half of the film.
The movie continues to tease us with the identity and reality of Pete, and presents several suggestions for Donna’s behavior. However, halfway through the film you realize the writers have no idea how to make the mystery pay-off for the audience.
A final note for those of you going to see this film. There’s a strange epilogue tacked on to the end that gives away the truth of the story. Besides being incredibly lame, it destroys the only real thing the film had going for it – the mystery of Pete. I’d suggest you leave as Gabriel is summing up the story on the radio, unless you want to be severely disappointed.
There are several interesting bits here but they aren’t put together well enough for me to recommend the film to you. You just have this feeling if the film had been put in the hands of a more experienced director or had gotten the necessary rewrites it could have been much more than just a mild curiosity.
