{celebrating a decade of learning to write in front of an audience}

Suspect Zero: Bewilderingly bad commentary

Last year’s film Suspect Zero wasn’t that bad.  It gets a 5.7 at IMDB.  I gave it a 6.  Unlike my brother, I like to watch director’s commentaries. I almost always watch them, especially if I either loved or loathed the movie. If I’m just apathetic about it and can’t imagine sitting through it again, I might skip it. So I put in the commentary for the movie. I made it two and a half minutes in. I transcribed the beginning of it for you. Enjoy.

My name is Elias Merhige and I am the director of Suspect Zero.

I did not set out to make a serial killer genre film, I did not set out to make a film about serial killers, I set out to express something much more deep, about the nature of the unconscious and the nature of justice and the nature of how the human mind works. These opening titles demonstrate the synapses of Orion’s brain, as each neurological fiber of his brain screams out to find and hunt. Right out of the titles we pull out of a drainpipe off of some lonely, forgotten highway. We come out of the unconscious, out of the earth, out of the bowels of the earth, and what do we see? A lonely can, tossed aside. A baseball that’s been used; for how many games? A broken doll that was once loved. Where is its owner?

We come upon a grimy milk carton. The rain begins to wash away the grime. The dirt falls away and we see this adorable, innocent child. Her date of birth. She’s been missing. Where is she? Most people don’t know, but since 1972, that this close to ninety thousand people: adults, women, men, children, that are all missing [sic].  Their bodies unaccounted for, their whereabouts unaccounted for.  Where are they?  That’s a fact, that’s not a fiction.



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