Pinprick (2009)

Plot: Divorced mom and teen daughter don't get along. Strange man lives in daughter's closet and appears to be her primary companion. Strange man meets mother and starts affair with her. Daughter becomes jealous. Mom discovers that strange man lives in daughter's closet. Strange man threatens mom and daughter. Mom attacks strange man with tennis racket. Dad pulls unconscious strange man out of Mom's house and asks strange man if they went too far. Dad then bandages strange man's forehead and returns to mom's house to mop up blood from Mom's kitchen. Theme(s): People get divorced, and bad things happen. Check your children's' closets more than annually. If you only know the person's first name, don't have sex with them. Men are in cahoots with one another to make women's lives miserable and deserve to have their skulls smashed in with a metal tennis racket.

It must be hard being the mother of a teenage girl. You have to worry about drinking and drugs, bullying from other girls, boys and pregnancy. And in the UK you also apparently have to worry about your daughter hiding a naked, older male ex-convict in her closet! The main conceit of this movie is so bizarre that from the get-go it almost immediately has to be either unadulterated exploitation (the only other film I've seen with this plot is the sleazy 70's softcore porn flick "Sister Emanuelle") or a surreal art film. This definitely starts out pretty surreal, but then it turns into a more-or-less straight drama for awhile before an ending that is even MORE surreal and ridiculous. I can't say I disliked it though simply because I've never seen anything quite like it before.After hiding this strange man in her closet for some reason, the girl (Laura Greenwood) is perturbed when her new "friend" leaves the closet and introduces himself in another context to her divorced mother (Rachel Blake)who she is at constant loggerheads with. This leads to an affair between the ex-convict and the mother, which the daughter is not so happy about. This whole thing here sounds like some kind of mother-daughter sex fantasy, but there is never really a sexual relationship between the convict and the daughter (despite him living naked in her closet at the beginning of the movie). There is some definite sexual tension, but a surprising lack of sex.Rachel Blake and, especially, Laura Greenwood are quite good. The actor playing the ex-con is Eastern European and not always a particularly easy to understand. Interestingly, he's the main sex object in the movie, not either of the women. There is also a fourth character--the father/ex-husband--who becomes increasingly important as the movie progresses and figures prominently in the even more bizarre ending. This is not a great movie, but it's definitely interesting.

I can understand why the reviews of this film do not agree. Not everyone would like Pinprick. It is a psychological suspense film that revolves around a triangle of characters with the relationships changing as the film progresses.Charlotte is a teenage girl whose parents have separated. She lives with her mother. A mysterious man enters their lives and complicates their already dysfunctional relationship. The fact that a teenage girl and her mother have a relationship that swings from love to hatred is nothing new, especially if the parents are estranged. But this man's agenda is unclear.The viewer must negotiate the confusing clues of the story and try to determine exactly what is going on. There is a feeling that one character is manipulating the others, but who is the manipulator? The game is dangerous, but what exactly is the game?To tell any more of the story would be saying too much. I will only say that this film may not have a point of view. It may be a suspense that exists only for the unraveling.The acting is convincing. I really enjoyed the way the background music created an ambiguous mood. But the sound was annoying in a couple of scenes, making it difficult to understand dialogue.

Excellent Well Made Film, the acting, the directing were spot on. A must see film, very thrilling, cool and sexy. Nice work, thank you!The film starts off one way then ends up something else, very creepy and you wonder if the person inside the teenagers closet is real or not, and when you find he is real and he is a criminal on loose - then he befriends the teenagers mother - WOW! What a hot mess, very creepy and cool. This film should have been notminated for something, best foreign film for the Oscars - the acting by the teenager was amazing, she should have been nominated. There are many films with such strong acting performances that don't get noticed, I'm not sure why.I would suggest anyone who likes cool, creepy, sexy thrillers to check out this film. I also saw a film called Unmoved Mover and realized it was from the same company Mystic Pictures; they have some good films.