Psychiatrist Sam Foster is standing in for a sick colleague and has to handle a case with a disturbed young art student named Henry Letham. The young man is inspired by an artist who took his life on his 21st birthday, and Henry, who turning 21 a few days later, announces to Sam that he'll do the same. Sam of course takes the threat seriously and tries to talk the guy out of doing it, but Henry seems too determined. Later Sam wants to have Henry taken into custody but fails at doing so, and while tracking his patient down, he gradually gets sucked into the world of Henry's obessions and loses his grip on what's real and what's not.
Stay is not a fantastic movie but was way better than I first expected it to be. It's not that close but somehow feels a bit like watching a David Lynch film. It jumps in and out of reality and sometimes it's hard to separate the two. For being a thriller it has the suspense going at full speed almost throughout the movie. It's complicated to know what's what at times but the movie manages to draw the viewer in and be interesting enough for one to care about what's going on. The characters are strong, especially Ryan Gosling starring as the suicidal patient Henry Letham.
Ewan McGregor's pants are too short. If someone would've asked me to mention one thing that really stood out in this movie, I would've mentioned his pants. I know it sounds really stupid and I'm not usually that superficial, it's just that they kept filming his pants so you really noticed them at many times in the movie, and they were too short. He changes pants in the movie but the next pair of pants were to short too, and so were the next ones. It didn't bring too much suspense or anything really to the whole experience, it's just that I couldn't stop thinking about it. I wonder if they did that on purpose, or if he just chose to wear those kind of pants on his own.
Enough about the pants already. Even if Stay is not an excellent film, it's somewhat impossible to take your eyes off it and it has a good pace from start to finish with a good build-up that later delivers some actual suspense every now and then. The actors do a very good job, Ryan Gosling plays the moody and dark Henry and manages to deliver a great performance to give the viewer a good picture of who the guy really is. Ewan McGregor does well as the psychiatrist who's trying to help Henry, and Naomi Watts plays his girlfriend who used to be suicidal as well.
Now, this movie asks a lot of questions and it's actually really hard to keep track of what's what. It's hard to know what's real, what's a dream or a fantasy, what goes one way and what's inside-out. Even if it's messy as hell at times, you're still never really thrown off the track, and most of the time you figure that you have a vague to a pretty good idea of what's going on and that it will work itself out eventually. I'm not really sure that it does, but it's still satisfying enough. Personally I hate movies where everything is explained to a hundred percent, it feels like you're a retard and that they wanted to make sure you really get everything right. But that's just boring, and while Stay might be a bit too much going the opposite direction, it will still make you think a lot and that's always a good sign.
I got sort of a Lynch feeling when watching Stay, as it's hard to know what's what and it's a bit unsettling and delivers some good suspense as well. It's beautifully shot and nicely directed, the acting is excellent and it's hard not to be drawn into the movie. A good but confusing thriller.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: Marc Forster
WRITING CREDITS: David Benioff
GENRE: Thriller
CAST: Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling, Naomi Watts
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 99 min
RATING: 7/10
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