The laughably idiotic new thriller "Never Talk to Strangers" combines elements of "Fatal Attraction" and "Jagged Edge," but it's really aiming for low-rent Brian De Palma ("Dressed to Kill," "Body Double," "Raising Cain") — right down to Pino Donaggio's trite score. (At least De Palma's pictures aim to be low-rent Alfred Hitchcock.)
But even with its sights set this low, the film misfires on every level.
Rebecca De Mornay, who is also billed as executive producer, stars as a familiar movie psychiatrist — you know, the shrink who is loonier than any of her patients. Not that this one has any patients.
De Mornay spends all of her professional time doing prison interviews with a serial rapist-killer (Harry Dean Stanton, doing a "Silence of the Lambs" thing). And at home she rejects her nice-guy neighbor (Dennis Miller) because her last boyfriend left her at the altar — and mysteriously disappeared. If that's not enough, her long-absent father (Len Cariou) is trying to worm his way back into her life, as the secret they harbor from their past is made readily transparent.
But one night in a grocery store, she can't resist a Puerto Rican surveillance expert (Antonio Banderas, again!), an ex-cop covered with weird tattoos who charms her with his knowledge of wine.
De Mornay accepts a "wine-tasting" invitation to Banderas' apartment — one of those third-story lofts with a huge elevator that only people in movies seem to have. And, of course, within minutes they are having sex.
It isn't long into this relationship before De Mornay also begins receiving little gifts delivered to her home — some dead flowers, painted threats on her bedroom wall, a dead cat. . . . (The latter is not as original as "Fatal Attraction's" boiled bunny, but what do you expect from a low-rent ripoff?)
Is it the new boyfriend, dear old Dad, the rejected neighbor?
Maybe it's the Avon Lady. De Mornay's character is so wacky that anything seems possible.
She screams and rants and raves, she faints because Banderas forces her to hold a toy gun at a shooting gallery and then shows off her marksmanship at a shooting range, she has flashbacks about her mother's mysterious death — and when Banderas becomes violent with her, she leaves — and immediately returns for some violent sex. And every time someone calls or drops by, De Mornay says the same thing: "It's a really bad time right now."
Do you suppose she's taking patients?
In the end, the resolution is truly absurd, an ending even Brian De Palma would reject. If he hadn't already used it. More than once!
"Never Talk to Strangers" is rated R for violence, sex, nudity, profanity and vulgarity.