PhilPaine.com

I don’t under­stand what moti­vat­ed Polan­s­ki to make this mud­dled super­nat­ur­al thriller. It’s the sort of thing that works fine in a book, but makes a ter­ri­ble movie. You can sort of guess what is going on at the end, but doubt­less most of the audi­ence left the the­atres scratch­ing their heads. A pity, because John­ny Dep­p’s per­for­mance is, as usu­al, extreme­ly pro­fes­sion­al. He wrings as much out of the emo­tion­al­ly ambigu­ous char­ac­ter as he can. Most of us who love books would have been charmed to see an enter­tain­ing film in which rare book col­lec­tors and deal­ers are giv­en a fic­tion­al life involv­ing mur­der, intrigue, and hot sex, how­ev­er inac­cu­rate­ly the tech­ni­cal details of book col­lect­ing are pre­sent­ed. But this film does­n’t enter­tain. Half-way through, one becomes bored with the enig­mas, sens­ing, cor­rect­ly, that they will not lead to any inter­est­ing conclusion.