The Monitor 2011 ★★★

Watched May 27, 2012

A very well shot psychological thriller that makes excellent use of Rapace's talents. She may seem a little too young to play the parent of an 8 year old, but the strength of her performance ensures you never really dwell on that aspect at all. The kid actor is perfectly up to the task too, his work standing up well alongside that of Rapace. There are some very nice story aspects, not least of all the sweet relationship that develops between the mother character and a kindly electronics store worker, played perfectly by an extraordinarily likeable Krisoffer Joner. All this good, though, is almost overthrown in the shoddy ending. It's one of those multilayered twists (one part of it is very predictable) that smashes everything, and leaves you struggling to put it all back together again. It's not quite the same catastrophic level of revisionism as High Tension/Switchblade Romance, but it's in the same ballpark, and it makes for a very dissatisfying ending to an otherwise admirable genre exercise.

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