I usually prefer the entertaining to the artistic in movies, but Freeze Frame is the first film that I think would have been better if it had been less commercial and more idiosyncratic.
Almost 10 years ago, Sean Veil (Lee Evans) was accused of a horrible triple murder he didn't commit. The case against him was thrown out of court because of the media grandstanding by lead detective Louis Emoric (Sean McGinley) and forensic psychologist Saul Seger (Ian McNeice). Since that day, Sean has been consumed by paranoia, fearful of the authorities framing him for another murder. His response to his fear is as obvious as it is disturbing. For nearly a decade, Sean has been videotaping every single second of his life. He has multiple cameras stationed throughout his dungeon-like home. When he goes outside, he straps a camera to his chest. Sean has created a visual record of every step, every meal, every night's sleep, every bowel movement, everything in his life for 9 years, 11 months and 28 days and stores all of those videotapes in a vault to provide him with the perfect alibi if he's ever wrongly accused again.
Sean might have gone on with his fearful and compulsive existence forever, but then a TV crime reporter named Katie Carter (Rachel Stirling) tells Sean she thinks he's innocent. That's what Sean has wanted more than anything in the world but he barely has time to enjoy it when the police burst in and accuse him of killing a woman 5 years ago. When Sean goes to get the tapes proving his innocence they're gone. In a panic, Sean flees from the cops and tries to come up with another way to deflect this unjust charge but in doing so, he sets in motion a chain of events that not only reveal who's framing him now, but who framed him for the massacre of the Jasper family 10 years ago.
This is a nice little film that's quite visually interesting. Some of it is shot like a normal film and some of it is footage from the many cameras Sean uses to record his life. It's a very good effort at utilizing the emotional and personal realism of the "handheld video" genre while freeing the story from the limitations of that style.
Lee Evans does a fine job portraying a man whose obsession for control and protection has warped his personality. Sean McGinley gives the right air of desperation to a cop who is fighting off his own death long enough to catch Sean Veil and make him pay for something. Ian McNiece is also perfectly self-righteous as the psychologist who catapulted himself to fame on the Jasper murder case. Rachel Stirling's character is more of a plot device than a real person, but she handles well everything the plot needs Katie Carter to do.
Freeze Frame, however, doesn't do enough with its own concept. The idea of a man so paranoid that he voluntarily lives under perpetual video surveillance of his own design suggests an awful lot of emotional and logistical ground to cover, but almost all of those details or possibilities are shoved aside because the film is more about being a clever mystery caper. The story only touches on Sean Veil's elaborate construction of his observation system in the most basic and shallow way. We also never get a sense of what kind of man Sean was before his initial arrest and the following years of obsessive personal vigilance, so there's nothing to compare to his present paranoid state. It limits the ability to sympathize with Sean because you don't really know how screwed up he is compared to his original self. I think the story would have been more effective if it had chucked most of the mystery and instead concentrated more on the way Sean lives his life and how it's changed him as a person.
There are also a couple of significant twists in the story that don't add up. There's one element that couldn't exist in the American media and justice system, but this is an Irish film and I'm not sure if Irish laws on crime reporting are different enough to make the twist plausible. The climax is also too pat and neat and requires a character's behavior and mental state to flip 180 degrees for absolutely no reason.
You won't be disappointed if you watch Freeze Frame, but you may feel like you've just seen a good idea that went largely unexplored.
Almost 10 years ago, Sean Veil (Lee Evans) was accused of a horrible triple murder he didn't commit. The case against him was thrown out of court because of the media grandstanding by lead detective Louis Emoric (Sean McGinley) and forensic psychologist Saul Seger (Ian McNeice). Since that day, Sean has been consumed by paranoia, fearful of the authorities framing him for another murder. His response to his fear is as obvious as it is disturbing. For nearly a decade, Sean has been videotaping every single second of his life. He has multiple cameras stationed throughout his dungeon-like home. When he goes outside, he straps a camera to his chest. Sean has created a visual record of every step, every meal, every night's sleep, every bowel movement, everything in his life for 9 years, 11 months and 28 days and stores all of those videotapes in a vault to provide him with the perfect alibi if he's ever wrongly accused again.
Sean might have gone on with his fearful and compulsive existence forever, but then a TV crime reporter named Katie Carter (Rachel Stirling) tells Sean she thinks he's innocent. That's what Sean has wanted more than anything in the world but he barely has time to enjoy it when the police burst in and accuse him of killing a woman 5 years ago. When Sean goes to get the tapes proving his innocence they're gone. In a panic, Sean flees from the cops and tries to come up with another way to deflect this unjust charge but in doing so, he sets in motion a chain of events that not only reveal who's framing him now, but who framed him for the massacre of the Jasper family 10 years ago.
This is a nice little film that's quite visually interesting. Some of it is shot like a normal film and some of it is footage from the many cameras Sean uses to record his life. It's a very good effort at utilizing the emotional and personal realism of the "handheld video" genre while freeing the story from the limitations of that style.
Lee Evans does a fine job portraying a man whose obsession for control and protection has warped his personality. Sean McGinley gives the right air of desperation to a cop who is fighting off his own death long enough to catch Sean Veil and make him pay for something. Ian McNiece is also perfectly self-righteous as the psychologist who catapulted himself to fame on the Jasper murder case. Rachel Stirling's character is more of a plot device than a real person, but she handles well everything the plot needs Katie Carter to do.
Freeze Frame, however, doesn't do enough with its own concept. The idea of a man so paranoid that he voluntarily lives under perpetual video surveillance of his own design suggests an awful lot of emotional and logistical ground to cover, but almost all of those details or possibilities are shoved aside because the film is more about being a clever mystery caper. The story only touches on Sean Veil's elaborate construction of his observation system in the most basic and shallow way. We also never get a sense of what kind of man Sean was before his initial arrest and the following years of obsessive personal vigilance, so there's nothing to compare to his present paranoid state. It limits the ability to sympathize with Sean because you don't really know how screwed up he is compared to his original self. I think the story would have been more effective if it had chucked most of the mystery and instead concentrated more on the way Sean lives his life and how it's changed him as a person.
There are also a couple of significant twists in the story that don't add up. There's one element that couldn't exist in the American media and justice system, but this is an Irish film and I'm not sure if Irish laws on crime reporting are different enough to make the twist plausible. The climax is also too pat and neat and requires a character's behavior and mental state to flip 180 degrees for absolutely no reason.
You won't be disappointed if you watch Freeze Frame, but you may feel like you've just seen a good idea that went largely unexplored.