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Domestic Disturbance
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Recently I travelled back some 33 years to check if
the teen/kids film Adventures in
Babysitting (Chris Columbus, 1987) remains as bright, inventive and
enjoyable as I remembered it. It does. And watching how swiftly it unfolds –
and especially how quickly it gets into the main line of its action – I was
struck by a huge difference between mainstream cinema then and now, in the 2020s.
Today, before the nocturnal adventure of the heroine
(played by Elisabeth Shue) and her young friends in that film could even begin,
a bunch of character traits would have to be set out for the main character (or
perhaps several of the characters), deftly or laboriously: some fears, some
neurosis, some blockage, as well as probably some desire or goal. Subsequently,
all these would be “answered”, conquered or fulfilled, in the course of the
plot’s events. When this device is done well (as in Bong Joon-ho’s The Host [2006]), it’s terrific; but, so often these days,
it’s a big drag. (I haven’t yet tried the 2016 telemovie remake of Adventures in Babysitting – directed by
John Schultz, whose previous work I admire – to see which narrative model,
1980s or 2000s, is followed.)
Domestic Disturbance drew my attention
in 2020 because I figured it might be an intimacy thriller from
the end of that sub-genre’s 1990s cycle. It was a mainstream release I had
somehow completely missed at the time. The ingredients seem promising: a
once-married couple, Frank (John Travolta) and Susan (Teri Polo), and the
suspiciously smooth but potentially menacing newcomer, Rick (Vince Vaughn), who
has moved into Susan’s life – as well as into the family home, and the upbringing
of son Danny (Matt O´Leary).
And director Harold Becker is closely associated with
psychological thrillers of various shades, among them Sea of Love (1989) and Malice (1993). (Looking up the details, I was startled to realise that Becker is now
in his 90s, and that Domestic Disturbance will be likely be his final directorial work; he’s also executive producer on
the Nicolas Cage vehicle adapted from Joyce Carol Oates, Vengeance: A Love Story [2017].)
As it turns out, Domestic
Disturbance is much less a ‘90s-style intimacy thriller than the
revisitation of a much older formula, spanning at least four decades from The Window (Ted Tetzlaff, 1949) to Larry
Cohen’s Perfect Strangers (aka Blind Alley, 1984) and, most popularly,
Peter Weir’s Witness (1985): the
dilemma of a child who witnesses a murder, and then feels too scared to tell,
or is threatened into keeping it a secret.
But Domestic
Disturbance marks the new narrative manner of 21st century
Hollywood. This means that, rather than starting where it conventionally (and I
believe in this case) more effectively should start – with Danny witnessing the violent crime – it kicks off with a long,
meandering succession of boringly naturalistic scenes laying all the groundwork
of everybody’s relationships: why the marriage failed, Frank getting time with
his son, Susan’s attraction to the new guy, Frank’s beloved but not lucrative
job working with boats, and so on. In fact, there’s so much of this that one
could easily halt the film 20 minutes in and assume it’s a “modern family
problems” telemovie melodrama. (Travolta’s star presence, in its latter-day
phase, seems to invite this humanist drift into misty Phenomenon [1996] territory.)
So, by the time the thriller complications kick in –
fights, escapes, a fire, explosions – it’s just too little, too late.
MORE Becker: Mercury Rising, City Hall © Adrian Martin 7 March 2020 |
