Very Cool!!!

Awesome Movie

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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

Good idea, but lousy realization. All in all, likable hacker thriller that kept me at the edge of my seat from time to time, but disappointed me with its excessive finale. Nothing in this movie is excellent, but everything is satisfying. I did not predict any of the twists and for me it was pretty much entertaining. Highlight of the movie is scene with lead female character getting naked in front of camera. I have no idea how they persuaded her to lose her clothes, but after so many years of eager anticipation, finally we have a chance, for the first time in a movie, to see Sasha Grey naked. :D <37/10P.S. OK, for the first time in mainstream movie :D :D :D

Open Windows concerns an unassuming young man named Nick Chambers (Elijah Wood) wins a contest to meet Jill Godard (Sasha Grey) and enjoy a fine dinner with her. Nick has been the webmaster of a fansite dedicated to Jill, rare photos of her, gossip, and information about her forthcoming films for years, and is waiting in his hotelroom for information about the dinner when Chord (Neil Maskell), Jill's manager, calls and informs him that the contest was canceled by Jill. Nick sets before his laptop, shocked and soulcrushed at his misfortune until Chord sends Nick a private link that houses the interworkings of Jill's cellphone. Chord has hacked into her personal phone and allows Nick the ability to spy on her activity, phone calls, files, camera, and general whereabouts from hereon out. With this power comes great irresponsibility, and Nick quickly finds himself learning of Jill's illicit affair with her agent, in addition to being dictated by a group of hackers who force Nick on the darkest, and most life-threatening, ride of his life.Open Windows premiered at South By Southwest film festival eerily close to the limited theatrical release date of The Den, its most comparable, and much superior, film counterpart. Where The Den was a slowburn film, which focused on a young webcam girl conducting a social experiment who was quickly lured into the dark, deathly parts of the web, Open Windows is a needlessly complicated, scatterbrained film complete with so many plotthreads, shifts in focus, changes in point-of-view, and overcomplicated storytelling that it doesn't take long for this film to breed complete indifference.Unfortunately, being the writer and director of this project, Nacho Vigalondo, one of horror's latest contemporaries alongside people like Ti West and Adam Wingard, bears most of the blame for the shortcomings of Open Windows. His first, and ultimately most significant problem, is he doesn't keep the film focused on Nick. After about twenty minutes of keeping the attention solely on Nick, Vigalondo changes to show us the point-of-views of these nasty hackers, in addition to Jill, muddling the entire focus of the film because now we know way too much about the plot. Largely confining the point-of-view to Nick would've made the film much more of a mystery rather than a film that feels the need to inform of us of every trick of its sleeve so early on.In an attempt to juggle three distinct points-of-views, humanize all the characters and justify their actions, and continue "opening windows" on Nick's computer, Vigalondo's balancing act falls apart when you realize that there's simply too much chaos going on in the film to truly decipher and divide your attention to. On top of everything else, the entire corporate spy/hacker angle comes way out of left field for a film that, at the end of it all, is really trying to be a somewhat sleazy, yet marginally inventive, cyberthriller.The most commendable attributes of the film come in the two leading talents, who fit so snugly into their roles they could be put to sleep. Elijah Wood is perfect as the conflicted webmaster, questioning the ethics of his spying actions whilst simultaneously relishing in the thought of all the unique content and information he's getting for the website, while Sasha Grey is perfect because of the glaring personal connection. With Grey working in the porn industry, being one of the most involved and daring mainstream performers, Grey undoubtedly found herself a great deal of attention from strangers online, let alone around her. Grey's evident empathy make Jill that much more of an intriguing character, despite her being encapsulated in a film that's too messy to really show her or say anything about her character.Open Windows, in short, is a mess; a film with a very strong idea and a solid opening twenty-five minutes that rapidly descends into a muddled and, in turn, uninteresting spy thriller. Vigalondo's overall goal of wanting to make a cyberthriller about infidelity (akin to Mike Nichols' exceptional Closer, so he claims) and a film more substantial to the genre is an admirable mindset, but when a film is this confusing and scatterbrained, you ultimately wish that he would've stuck to a more linear outline and created a film that was average rather than frustrating.Starring: Elijah Wood, Sasha Grey, and Neil Maskell. Directed by: Nacho Vigalondo.

A jilted fan (Elijah Wood) soon finds himself pulled into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse after he accepts the opportunity to spy on his favorite actress (Sasha Grey) via his laptop.This film has a strong beginning, showcasing a film within a film. In actuality, that film may be even more fun than the movie we end up seeing! What can be said for sure is that Sasha Grey is really blossoming; this role seems appropriate for her, and one might be surprised she was not cast as "herself". Knowing her background, she seems a prime target for stalkers. Her recent contributions to horror ("Would You Rather?") and science fiction ("The Scribbler") have been wonderful, and hopefully she continues down this path...Elijah Wood as a creep seems to be something he has been honing for a while. Some of this is evident in "Sin City", and it comes to the fore in "Maniac". Here, it sort of comes in on itself. He is given the opportunity to be the ultimate creep and rebels against it as much as he can. (Of course, there is a plot twist here and there.) The film is genius in its use of technology, and the way it twists and turns. Is it realistic? Of course not. But very, very clever. Unfortunately, it does tend to run long, and a good edit here or there might have made a huge difference. What could be a fast-paced film has plenty of slower moments.Rue Morgue magazine calls the film "Hitchcockian voyeurism meets cyberbullying" and Preston Fassel writes that the film is "eerily prescient" given its timing around GamerGate and sexism in the online gaming community. Writer-director Nacho Vigalondo consciously tried to keep the genre boundaries blurred. He succeeded, which may alienate some audiences.Despite the slow points and a filming style (through laptops and webcams) that is a bit hard to follow or enjoy at times, this film still deserves a solid rating for what it set out to accomplish and what it achieved. No doubt many other films in the future will try similar things, but it may be a while before anyone else succeeds to this degree.

The title is very attractive, but in my opinion the end product is just a mix of concepts that don't complement each other. "Open Windows" is easy to visualize because it involves suspense and plays with technology such as our everyday devices. The problem is that it doesn't go further into the themes it presents.Once all the action inside the hotel come to an end, the rest seems to go out wildly. Nacho Vigalondo imposes a breakneck pace ... the problem is that history doesn't keep up. At one point, I had to go back a few minutes to see if there was a logical thread connecting everything. I don't consider that the problem is on the technical side but in the text. The concepts are good, but the rest ...It is unfortunate that "Open Windows" waste the potential that its beginning promised.