For the life of me I can't understand what people see in this film. I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival. The movie is plagued with bad acting, bad dialogue, miscasting, and a cliché plot. I've read comments that the movie is introspective. But I failed to see an introspective moment on screen.<br /><br />****SPOILERS***** The sex scene between Viggo and Maria on the stairs was realistic, but the sixty-nine sex scene, supposedly to show how into each other they were, didn't work. While it's a great position between partners, it looks ridiculous when trying to show intimacy. Especially when they acted like they were snacking on each other.<br /><br />Maria Bello- Cast as a small town attorney. Miscast maybe. Her look speaks to big city lawyer but not small town.<br /><br />Viggo- At least Maria tried to act. Viggo looked like someone was feeding him his lines from behind the camera. I really love his wooden acting when he tries to tell Maria that he thought he buried Joey a long time ago. It looked like he was going to laugh at one point. Plus it's hard to take a middle-aged man named "Joey" seriously.<br /><br />Direction-Viggo's limping scene as he tries to race home to save his family. Crazy. Viggo snapping a flunkie's neck on his way out of his criminal brother's office. HI-larious. Or even the choice to have all the mob guys wear black like a vampire convention.<br /><br />I could maybe forgive those scenes (or not) but I couldn't stand the obvious metaphor with the weak bully who preyed on Viggo's son. The bully was really a wimp at heart and Viggo's son was just waiting for his burst of motivation to take on the bully and his flunkie in the spirit of his father's heroism. Haven't seen that before.<br /><br />But the worst was, no not Ed Harris hamming it up as Mr. Fogarty, but Viggo's daughter. She had to be one of the most grating child actors ever cast. She was horrible.<br /><br />In summary, from the moment Viggo's family crowded around the little girl because she had a nightmare and all were there to console her (in Cronenberg's hackneyed attempt to show Tom Stall's initially perfect existence) to the end when Tom/Joey/Michael Myers comes home to find his family tensely sitting at the dinner table and little girl Sarah pulls out a plate to show daddy Tom/Joey/Jason X is still part of the family, the movie was a complete package of one terribly directed cliché after another.