When we die, are we sent to another dimension? Are we able to communicate with people of this earth? Is there life after death? Apparently there is, because Kevin Costner’s dead career has brought him back to the movie screen for another cringing disappointment.
“Dragonfly” is one of those films that would sound like something interesting if you had a two-page synopsis of what the film was about including only the premise, the climax and the now-mandatory “surprise ending.” The only problem is that the intriguing two-page story, which involves a dead wife attempting to communicate with her husband, is put into the hands of filmmakers who are unable to materialize a stimulating concept into a feature-length film. Instead they have a given us a formulaic and cliché version of other successful films, most notably M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 blockbuster “The Sixth Sense.”
The film stars Kevin Costner as the bad-ass maverick doctor Joe Darrow who has recently lost his wife, Dr. Emily Darrow, in a tragic bus accident somewhere in the jungles of Colombia. Her body is unable to be found and, as he returns to his home in Chicago, he is thrust into the role of the grieving husband who works obsessively with a macho “nothing-to-lose” attitude. Watching these initial scenes in the hospital, one cannot help but be reminded of the worst-of-the-worst episodes of “E.R.” I’ve been to the hospital enough times to know that the rebel E.R. surgeon and the hard-nosed hospital administrator do not exist, and the acting in this film heavily supports that theory.
Before his wife’s death, Joe had promised her that he would look after some of her patients in the oncology ward of the hospital they both worked at. After a few visits, Joe begins to suspect that his wife may be trying to communicate with him through several of her patients’ near-death experiences. The patients are not allowed to talk about these experiences but Joe begins to believe that his wife is trying to send him a message. He witnesses several strange, yet very predictable, occurrences at his home, and one of his newer patients, whom Emily had never met, recognizes him.
Basically, Costner’s character needs to wait for another patient to have a near-death experience in order to receive another message. At this point in the film I wondered, “Is he really going to wait around hoping for another child to nearly die?” Apparently it is an everyday occurrence in this hospital ward, as one of the patients boasts, “I have the best near-death experiences.”
Joe is so distraught by Emily’s death that he even passes on a nearly dying suicide patient declaring, “I’m interested in people that want to live tonight.” Flat and dry dialogue such as this is what makes the first half of the film almost laughable, and any sign of suspense is thwarted by Costner’s dismal performance. If the skill of acting was fueled by water, then I would say that Costner is well past the point of dehydration. Although this will surely be his seventh or eighth failed film in the past eight years, it should not all rest on his shoulders as his performance is far from the only misguided aspect of this film.
Most of the other actors in this film, such as Academy Award winning actresses Linda Hunt and Kathy Bates, are pushed aside and under-utilized. Bates plays the supportive neighbor helping Joe to cope with his loss, and Hunt plays the controversial nun who once investigated the near-death phenomena and is considered too risqué for the hospital (but not the Catholic school she teaches at). Both actresses are usually reliable in supporting roles but here they are used to fill empty screen time. Neither of these roles serves any real purpose in the story.
The director, Tom Shadyac, has been responsible for films such as “Patch Adams,” “Liar Liar,” “The Nutty Professor” and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.” Now let’s pause and contemplate what movie studio would think that this man would be able to make a super-natural thriller that explores the concept of near-death experiences when his previous “audience-pleasing moments” include a man bent over trying to talk out of his ass?
From the moment I saw Shadyac’s name in the credits I expected to see one of two things: 1) Jim Carrey run on screen, bend over, and say “I see dead people” or 2) A poorly crafted suspense film directed by someone in over their head in material they are not capable of conveying properly. Luckily only one of the two was seen, but I won’t give away the surprise ending. Unable to rely on comedy for the first time as a director, Shadyac attempts to scare his audience, but instead exploits every standard thrill device we’ve already seen. The film is full of dark and stormy nights, flickering lamps and breezy curtains.
The filmmakers want you to be scared for some reason, and they use cheap thrills to do so. You may jump in your seat, but when you do so you’ll feel offended, and when the film ends you’ll leave the theater wondering why you were supposed to be scared in the first place. Is there a reason Joe’s wife is haunting him? By the end of the film I really didn’t care.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
