E-Mail This Article to a Friend TWISTED

Sarah Thorp’s hunt-the-serial-killer script is an elaborate exercise in gender reversal, the key ones being that the Homicide inspector in charge of the case is a hard-drinking, promiscuous woman (Ashley Judd’s Jessica) and that the victims are attractive men — in fact, her discarded former lovers. If the film’s only interest lay in this premise, and in details like Jessica’s accusing male opponents of having "hissy fits" and being "pussies," this would be a very minor work. But reversing gender roles is only the opening salvo in an all-out war on genre logic. Getting crazier by the minute, Twisted overexposes its clichés (like Jessica’s violent family history and nightly blackouts) and implausibilities (like the department’s decision to keep her on the case) until you’re not sure whether to take the film as a sophisticated parody, a surrealist prose poem, or an unusually dumb thriller. If the last option seems the most tempting, consider how the spare direction by the entertaining Philip Kaufman (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Quills) augments the holes and bumps of the script instead of paving over them. I vote for surrealist prose poem. (97 minutes)