At 98 minutes it's a gripping enough movie with more than a quorum of gore. As an insight into mental illness with or without traumatic origins, I don't think it rises much above A Beautiful Mind.Perhaps it is authentic in the sense of portraying a mind trapped into revolving eternally around a single obsession. Unusual is that he finally sees through himself. It is too bleak for a movie and not bleak enough to correspond to the realities.
As Roger Ebert says, there is no growth, no transcendance. But maybe the concluding insight into his own failing is a growth, even a remarkable one, given the bleak prognosis in such cases.
Roger Ebert's review
