Wicked (1998)

Found this film very interesting and enjoyed the great acting of Julia Stiles, (Ellie Christianson), "Mona Lisa Smile", who adored her father and never seemed to get along with her mom. However, both parents had other interests outside of the marriage and the story has many unconventional situations created between a daughter and her father. Ellie could identify certain marks on her father's butt that proved very damaging to any adult talking to her. Ellie had a neighbor who lived next door, who was in the process of having a divorce, and had the hots for her every movement and enjoyed driving golf balls into their windows. Things portrayed in this film have happened in real life, ever since man and woman were created and they will continue to be just plain WITCHED !

I get more and more respect for Julia Stiles, the more movies I see with her. Initially, I considered her rather boring and not even particularly pretty, but now that I've seen a wide selection of her choice of roles, I find her growing on me in a big way! She's been in Shakespeare movies and she's generally not afraid to tackle difficult, uncommercial and controversial material. Save The Last Dance was a great experience for me; I could watch it over and over. So of course I also had to get Wicked. In fact, after looking for it for a long time, I was finally able to buy it as a second-hand DVD from a friend.The movie was something quite different than I expected. I thought it was going to have supernatural elements, but it didn't. Instead it was a fairly low-key drama about how social and especially familial misery is perpetuated. How people continue down bad roads because they mimic what they see their role models (usually older family members) do.The general structure of the movie is that of a murder mystery, and a quite effective one. Ellie's mother is killed, and seemingly everyone in the family and communal vicinity are unstable enough to be suspects. Was it the baby-sitter, the father or the neighbor? Or was it Ellie herself, whose relationship with her mother was particularly bad, even hateful? There seems, from the user comments here, to be differing opinions about who the murderer was, because the end of the movie is not very specific about the first murder. Was it Ellie or her younger sister? In my opinion, it makes by far the most sense if it was Ellie. The younger sister ended up killing Ellie, of course, but there is no logic to her being the first murderer. Instead there is plenty of logic to Ellie being the first murderer, because her younger sister was just mimicking Ellie. In fact, I'm sure this is the case, because of the strangle-hold episode, where Ellie nearly strangles her sister - this would have "inspired" her sister to conclude that this was the proper sort of way to deal with a problematic situation. (Indeed, the first murder *cannot* have been committed by the younger sister, due to her reaction to her discovery of the suitcase containing the murder weapon.)So, the movie was about "monkey see, monkey do", or, as Shakespeare put it, "the evil that men do lives after them". We first have Ellie trying to replace her mother as the woman of the house, incl. all marital duties, and when she partially achieves this, her sister subsequently replaces Ellie's earlier role in the house, starting also to carry out the tasks that she saw Ellie do. Essentially, the youngest sister is trying to replace Ellie, just as Ellie tried to replace their mother, and using most of the same methods to achieve it - even murder.Yes, it is an updated version of the Electra story, and it is also a statement about the dangers of isolation. Taking place in a gated community that is meant to shut out the evils of the world, we see that those evils continue in our midst, because with the gated community we have done nothing but *pretend* that those evils were not part of us - in other words, we have glossed over some symptoms but not dealt with the causes.Even beyond this, there are many interesting non-literal elements to think about in this movie. For instance, the opening, with the blond girl that we think is Ellie driving around (intercut with scenes of Ellie packing), but is really Lena, must be meant to indicate that Ellie's father likes women with that look. So maybe he had a subconscious reverse-Oedipal complex towards his daughter, too. In general, the father was an unassertive and weak-minded man that one couldn't feel much sympathy for.Anyway, the movie is well-acted and quite absorbing on most levels. The one thing that keeps it from a higher rating is that it simply isn't believable that the 11 or 12-year-old young sister is capable of the brutal murder of her older sister - maybe she had the will to do it, but it's highly doubtful that she had the physical strength. However, because of the symbolism and nice structure to the movie, I can accept the ending - but only just.I'm looking forward to a second viewing, where I may notice more details.My rating: A very solid 7 out of 10.

This movie was a bit different. With William Moses as the father in the movie it was caught my eye. He has been in many stalking type movies but I would say he was stalked in this one. We have a killer who you could spot from a mile away but a good twist at the end changes that. We have incest, blackmail, underage drinking all kinds of touchy subjects. I wouldn't say this movie was great but it is worth watching. I don't know how old Julia Stiles is in real life but I would guess she was older than 14 when this was filmed. Some good splatter but just wish they would of threw a couple more victims in for good measure. Check this out if you like movies like The Stepfather and American Beauty. Although this movie is much different than those two they are similar in genre. Slasher Reviewer gives this wicked flick three thumbs up out of the full 5!!Check it out if you are a fan of Sam Boone or The Furlong Mansion killings!!Sorry Charlie, that's a Sam Boone quote from the movie!

Wicked is a extremely bizzare film, there is such a varied mix of ideas that it is very hard to keep track of the story, the ideas are good ones there's a bit of who dunnit, murder, intrigue, sex, deception, being physcotic, dealing with you dad getting a new girlfriend and much more but Wicked just cant seem to link them altogether to make a good strong cohirent plot. The main story is after a women has a huge row with her daughter she is murdered in a very brutal manner, the police are trying to track down the killer but are having very little luck. All the way through the film the tension is very high and the atmosphere is very good, there a immense who dunnit as the writers throw in suspects left, right and centre. There is also a very intriguing plot twist when the daughter becomes ever obsessed with her dad. The gorey scenes are also very brutal for a 15 certificate. Julia Stiles puts in a good performance as a character who through the course of the film you see slowly going over the edge, the rest of the cast are very good to its just a shame that the poor writing let them down. Most of the film is quite good, going along at a good pace and adding more and more plot twists, but the ending is just the most ludicrous thing I have ever seen, you never really find out who killed the mum and its just a excuse for the to be a total blood bath, where people get there heads smashed in, their feet cut and a hole blasted through their heart.