Wonderful Movie

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fantastic!

A Masterpiece!

If the ending hadn't been so fantastically unexpected, I don't think I could rate this movie so well.This movie has a lot of uncomfortable, distressing, "marriage falling apart" character interaction. That sort of thing is not my kind of drama, so the pace seemed to drag for me.In addition, the main characters are difficult to relate to and thus care much about -- the husband (Alan Rickman) is rather bitter and cranky and the wife (Polly Walker) is aloof and a little haughty. The acting was just fine (Norman Reedus was very alluring), but the characters themselves were perhaps a little TOO realistically flawed (for me).The setting was nice and appropriately isolated and a little spooky. The cinematography had something to it that seemed a little old-fashioned to me somehow.But the last 5-15 minutes of this movie are so ingenious that every uncomfortable scene, awkward conversation, and inexplicable character behavior absolutely worth it. I guessed every typical plot twist except the one that occurred.The ending definitely makes this movie worth watching. The intrigue and the drama, not quite as much.

+There may be Spoilers+ Nothing really new here involving a couple who run into this injured stranger as their driving through a heavy rainstorm in rural Maine.David & Alexis Weinberg, Alan Rickman & Polly Walker, were on their way to catch a ferry home but are delayed until the next day when they miss the boat. Picking up this young stranger ,Norman Needus, who was thought at first to be dead he ends up also getting on the ferry the next morning and sailing for the Weinbergs' island home. Hanging out in the woods and the nearby beach the stranger come in contact with the Weinberg's again in a most unusual way. The Weinbergs planing to sail back to the mainland get trapped in a fog bank and go off course and runs aground on nearby Seal Rock. It's there again they to run into the stranger, as if he knew that they would be there. This the stranger get knocked out by David with a log thinking he's trying to rob both him and Alexis.The stranger, after recovering from his head wound, helps David & Alexis get their boat fixed so they can sail back home. Later cooking up a large and magnificent meal for the couple he's allowed to stay over until the next morning when David is to take him, by boat, back to the mainland. Up until the time when David leaves both the stranger and Alexis alone, and goes to see some friends on the mainland, you have no idea where the movie "Dark Harbor" is taking you.There's something going on between the three, David Alexis & the stranger,but it's so weird that you feel that at any moment you would find out that it's a dream, or hallucination,like the dream that Alexis had, about David attacking her with an ax, earlier in the movie. "Dark Harbor" goes in and out of sequence as if it were badly edited with a number of scenes that are never explained? Like what just exactly happened to David when he wakes up with a bloody mouth and who gave it to him? Alexis? the stranger? There's also David, bloody mouth and all? going off the handle and what seems to be accusing Alexis of driving her father to suicide where she completely loses it, and almost runs him through with a set of kitchen knives. All this while the stranger calmly sit at the table watching the entire scene. The stranger himself is attacked by what by now seems to be an insane David only to lose him in the woods with Alexis who it turned out David was leaching off, during their seven year marriage, throwing him out of her house and island. Finding the stranger in the woods, cold and with nowhere to go, Alexis seems to accept him back as David's replacement as "the man" in the house. We then see both she and the stranger munch down some wild mushrooms, that grow on the island, during a pouring rain. Just when you think the film "Dark Harbor" is over your hit with theses two scenes catching you off guard, as your trying to figure just what happened in the film,that explains the reason for the strangers present on the island and in both David's & Alxis' lives.Very confusing story but the breathtaking and gorgeous photography of the state of Maine make the movie worth sitting through. The surprise ending isn't really that hard to figure out since the stranger showed his true feeling, and colors, to Alexis earlier in the film when he did a skit of a 1962 birthday party for JFK at Madison Square Garden. It became obvious at the end of the movie that all that happened between David & Alxis involving the stranger was no accident at all but planned well in advance. It was only in the films final moment that you realized who did all the planning.

I really loved this movie. I thought it was very well done. The character interaction was wonderfully done as was the characterization. The actors were definitely believable. The plot was very deep and intriguing. Even though parts of it are a bit slow and sometimes a bit boring, it's definitely worth watching several times. The chemistry between the three main actors was great. If you don't want to watch it for that, then at least watch it for the drama between the characters. I mean, the whole thing was just "Whoa!" It was like I couldn't look away. The whole movie grabbed my attention and kept my interest, even through the slow parts. I loved this movie and almost everything about it. I loved the ending because it was so interesting and, if you watch the movie a second time, makes perfect sense. But I'm not spoiling anything.

This could be a great film with shocking conclusion. Unfortunately, it was not. What I missed most badly, was something that would draw my attention from the main three characters. Some other people or a little side plot... As there were: 1 married couple, 2 young boy, it was quite clear that one of the spouses would be unfaithful. Of course, I thought that it would be the woman and therefore the end a good deal surprised me but as she had died and I had been waiting for something to happen at last, it was merely amusing. What a pity that even the fine idea of this film, even Alan Rickman, Polly Walker and Norman Reedus, could not make it really thrilling. I loved their performance and it is sad that because of the screenplay it could not exactly distinguish itself.