Secret window - 2004

 First, I haven’t read the book, so I’ve no idea how it compares. Having sad that, the movie was not bad, the acting was good, but it lacked something…The revelation was too sudden, it was forced, in a way. I’ll explain better at the end.

The plot, so it’s clear what I mean:

We meet writer Mort Raney. Six months ago he caught his wife in a motel room with another man, Ted. Now they’re in the middle of a divorce. It’s not over yet only because he hasn’t signed the papers yet. 

He livesin an isolated house, and a man named Shooter comes to accuse him of having stolen his story, but changing the ending. The manuscript he leaves actually is pretty much word for word as his story Secret Window, about a man killing his wife who didn’t love him. Mort talks to the sheriff, then he hires Ken to investigate the matter. He’s scared of this man, and rightly so. Shooter killed his dog after all. Mort is sure he wrote that story and published it first, in a magazine, but to prove it he’d have to get the magazine from Amy’s house (where they used to live together). He drives there and we see that Amy’s going out and doesn’t see him. Next, he’s at home and Amy calls him to tell him that the house has been burned down. Mort now thinks that it’s all Ted’s plan against him, that he probably hired Shooter to harass him. So when Ted goes to him to demand that he signs the divorce papers, he refuses. 

Shooter wants to meet, but once there Mort sees that both Ken and Tom, a local man who saw  him talking to Shooter, have been killed. Mort faints, and then wakes up to Shooter saying that he did it with Mort’s screwdriver, so Mort gets rid of the bodies by pushing the car into the water. 

Now that the copy of the magazine at his old house has been destroyed, he has a new one delivered to him. He goes in town to get it, avoiding the sheriff, but at home he sees that his own story, and only his, has been ripped off the magazine. He thinks Shooter did it, but then he wonders how could he have done it, and he starts talking to himself, actually seeing himself, and then even Shooter appears out of thin air, saying that Mort created him. Now Mort remembers a time when he bough that hat and imagined a man from Mississippi wearing it. 

Tired of waitiing for him to sign those papers, Amy drives to his house to confront him, but when she arrives the house is a mess, and there’s the word Shooter everywhere, even carved on the walls, and then Mort reveals himself behind a door and she reads ‘shoot her’ behind him. He’s wearing that hat, and speaks like Shooter, and tells her that Mort is not here, he took the coward way out. Amy is scared now, he tries to grab her by the hair, and when she tries to run he stabs her leg.

Ted followed her, and now arrives in time to be killed by Mort under Amy’s eyes. She’s next.

Some time passes, and the sheriff pays him a visit to say that they all know what he did but can’t prove it, and he should at least stop going into town because people are not comfortable with him around…

We see thata the little ‘secret garden’ outside his ‘secret window’ there is now a small corn field - which explains all the cobs he has in his house now, eating it all the time. The camera starts to go under it so we can be sure that Amy and Ted’s bodies are buried there.

Mort now appears calmer and healthier than he was before, and replies that this ending is perfect.

Because of that ‘Mort is not here’ line we understand that Shooter is another personality of Mort, the one that deals with the killiings (the dog, Ken, Tom who of course saw Mort talking alone since Shooter was not real, plus Amy and Ted). 

The last line in Shooter’s book, saying that in time the wife’s death will be a mystery even to him, probably means that his mind will deal with it, maybe remove it from his consciousness. 

Intriguing story, yes.

The problem is how he found out, that scene of him talkiing to himself was boring, it should have been more involving, like: Mort2 trying to force him to accept the truth and Mort1 desperately denying it until Shooter’s arrival to confirm it all. That would have made the whole thing better.

From Secret window, secret garden by Stephen King

Mort Raney - Johnny Depp

Shooter - John Turturro

Amy - Maria Bello

Ted - Timothy Hutton

Ken - Charles S. Dutton

Sherriff Dave - Len Cariou