Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

weasl-729-310682 I agree with several other reviewers that this movie is underrated here.It keeps your interest, especially if you like horses, and the contrast between hectic, noisy, frustrating, randomly violent, dirty, inhumane city life and the clean air and soothing charms of the "simple life" in the country (which now costs much more than most of us can afford).I think both Jessica Lange and Gweneth Paltrow handled their roles with aplomb. Anyone who's seen Lange in "Blue Sky" with Tommy Lee Jones will not be a bit surprised at her ability to successfully carry off a full-on lunatic.I think people may be a little put off by the happy ending from a lower budget, non-mainstream film, but what do I know?Well, I know I liked it more than it's rated on here, and I'd recommend it to friends. A masterpiece, it isn't, but I'd consider it entertaining and worthy of your time if you like mystery/thrillers set mostly in beautiful country surroundings with good acting.

SnoopyStyle Jackson Baring (Johnathon Schaech) brings his girlfriend Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) home to meet his mother Martha (Jessica Lange). They're a couple of New Yorkers and Martha is alone in the big family estate. She wants his son to be home and she has a devious plan. Soon after the visit, Helen finds herself pregnant. Jackson proposes to her and they have a wedding back at the family estate. After a masked intruder terrorizes Helen, they decide to leave NYC and go back to the horse farm to help his mother fix it up.This starts off too slowly. It's a lot of fake interaction that telegraphs where the movie is inevitably going. It is both predictable and boring. It improves slightly after the very long setup and the couple starts living with the mother. Jessica Lange deteriorates into a caricature. The husband is a ridiculous fool. The last 15 minutes is badly written. It's begging to end with a bang, but the movie ends with a whimper. It's really silly to end it in that way. It's simply a weak effort from writer/director Jonathan Darby.

shawn_m_roeder I thoroughly enjoyed this movie the first time I saw it ten years ago. The film reminded me of some of my favorite Hitchcock flicks, namely Shadow of a Doubt and Notorious. The story builds slowly and generates just enough paranoia of impending danger to keep the audience interested. By the time everything comes together, the audience has an emotional investment in the main character and experiences genuine anxiety at her ordeal. This is so refreshingly different from the movies that slice and dice cardboard characters in an attempt to generate suspense.After seeing how poorly people have reacted to this film, I revisited it to see if my memory served me correctly. My assessment remains the same. Jessica Lange gives a stellar performance as the homicidal control freak. Gwyneth Paltrow is easy to empathize with as the paranoid daughter-in-law. Nina Foch is hysterical as the cheerful old lady who knows all the family secrets. I have met each of these characters in the real world. The only reason I would hesitate to call this a masterpiece is because there is no Hitchcock cameo. Still, this is a worthy imitation of the master's work.

mrlocco An absolutely awful movie I watched only because of Gwyneth Paltrow who I had previously admired greatly. Not so much now. Shame on her for being party to this load of rubbish. It started off quite promisingly, well actually the wheels didn't start coming off until burglary/attack on Paltrow when it was blatantly and painfully obvious that the mother had arranged this. No explanation of the reason for this. Things went rapidly downhill from there, yes the scenery was attractive if you like that sort of thing but credit for that is due to mother nature not the cinematographer. I think the second worst aspect, after the terrible story line, was Lange's acting.Incidentally, Oxytocin is rendered useless in the digestive system and is only effective if absorbed through the mucous membranes or given intravenously, and even then has a half life of 3 minutes I believe, so it would be totally useless taken in food. Also if my mother-in-law had treated me like that when I was in labour and then tried to kill me with a lethal injection I would not have stayed in the house even for a dramatic denouement the next morning.Then the son, after being led around by the nose by the evil mother does a complete about face in the space of a few minutes on the strength of his wifes unsubstantiated accusations.A rubbish movie best avoided.