Running Time. 2 hours 4 mins
Director. Gregory Hoblit
Cast. Embeth Davidtz, James Gandolfini, John Goodman, Donald Sutherland, Denzel Washington.
The main gripe I have with Gregory Hoblit's Fallen is that the film doesn't quite know which genre it belongs to - horror, crime, action, psychological thriller? Nonetheless, irrespective of genre, Hoblit creates a suitably unsettling film, laced with a sense of dread and a wonderfully disguised sucker punch.
Detective John Hobbes (Denzel Washington) is tormented by a series of apparently random murders matching the style of a previously executed serial killer, Edgar Reese (Elias Koteas).
Director Gregory Hoblit opts for an atmosphere of menace, malaise and foreboding overtones rather than going for routine jump-scares. But the first-person narration is lazy exposition and the out of body, point of view of the demon is jarring.
Whilst stylistically similar to David Fincher's Se7en (or the lesser known, Jack Sholder's The Hidden from 1987), Fallen lacks the substance of Se7en. When you consider that Se7en was made three years prior to Fallen, you begin to realise how dated Fallen is. Or equally, how timeless Se7en is.
There's a wonderful deployment of an early Rolling Stones song, Time is on my side, which becomes emblematic and integral to the storyline. Guaranteed to leave you singing the opening lines for days to come.
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