Abandon
The Rules of Attraction as a reluctant thriller.
This is a thriller failing to release itself from the genre trappings and turning into a run-of-the-mill spot-the-twist hunt. It seems the producers were more interested in the psychological terror of being a college student on the brink of turning into nominal adults and discovering they are about to be released into the wild wild world feeling unprepared regarding the new experiences they will encounter.
Since The Rules of Attraction has already been made into a film, they were forced to “innovate” by bolting an underwhelming and underdeveloped plot about insanity and multiple points of view that telegraphs its intent from a mile away and obscures the true point of the story.
The cast does what it can, but the only developed characters are Katie Holmes and Zooey Deschanel, which do a damn fine good job.
It’s not one of those films that could be saved in the editing room, the problems started upstream, so this hard to recommend, unless your hobby is watching failed films and imagining how they could be much better.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.