{"id":7274,"date":"2013-06-14T14:24:46","date_gmt":"2013-06-14T18:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=7274"},"modified":"2013-06-14T14:24:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-14T18:24:46","slug":"wish-you-were-here-its-a-thriller-you-know-like-crime-and-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2013\/06\/wish-you-were-here-its-a-thriller-you-know-like-crime-and-punishment.html","title":{"rendered":"“Wish You Were Here”: It’s a Thriller. You Know, Like “Crime and Punishment.”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Wish You Were Here<\/em> is a slight Australian suspense flick about a married couple, expecting their third child, who go on a tourist jaunt to sunny Cambodia with the wife\u2019s sister and the sister\u2019s beau. After a night of hard partying the boyfriend can\u2019t be found. The married couple return to Australia as the girlfriend stays behind to try to find her man; when she comes back, still alone, it\u2019s obvious that she\u2019s hiding something\u2013and so is her sister\u2019s husband.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of good things here, and in general the movie does what I wanted it to do. Secrets are revealed, foreigners turn out to be less of a problem than the stranger behind a loved one\u2019s eyes, events spiral downward. I don\u2019t love the way that Cambodia and its people are basically used to explore a white Australian couple\u2019s moral lives, but that\u2019s probably part of the price of admission to this kind of story. Two things really made the movie go beyond my expectations.<\/p>\n

First, there\u2019s some genuinely shocking bad behavior on display. There\u2019s an extended sequence involving the pregnant wife which had me really gasping and on the edge of my seat for a good twenty minutes, through several changes of scene and twists of the story. There\u2019s a willingness to \u201cgo there,\u201d and\u2013here\u2019s where the movie really earned my respect\u2013to play out all of the consequences, including penitence and forgiveness. The consequences of the characters\u2019 actions are painful, but they don\u2019t take the \u201ceverything just gets worse and worse forever\u201d spiral path. I think that grim \u2018n\u2019 gritty, despairing style of storytelling can often let characters (and audiences) off the hook, since if there\u2019s no hope of positive change then there\u2019s no pressure to change.<\/p>\n

The second great thing about Wish You Were Here<\/em> builds on the first one. There was a moment when the screen went dark and I sort of grimaced, and slumped in my seat thinking, I wish people wouldn\u2019t always end their stories right here. This is when it starts to get interesting!<\/em><\/p>\n

And then the story continued. And it was<\/em> interesting. The characters made a choice and had to live with that choice. We didn\u2019t follow them as long or as intensely as I would have liked\u2013I\u2019d seriously watch a whole movie about what happens in the last five minutes of this one, just as I\u2019d read a whole book that\u2019s just the epilogue of Crime and Punishment<\/em>. But so many movies today end with a sort of smash cut on a question: Whom do you believe? or, What would you do? In many cases it would be more challenging to the audience to show characters answering that question for themselves. It would stretch the audience\u2019s imagination rather than confirming whatever we already believe about human nature.<\/p>\n

So yes: The setup of WYWH<\/em> isn\u2019t new, but the payoff is much better than what we usually get from this kind of story.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wish You Were Here is a slight Australian suspense flick about a married couple, expecting their third child, who go on a tourist jaunt to sunny Cambodia with the wife\u2019s sister and the sister\u2019s beau. After a night of hard partying the boyfriend can\u2019t be found. The married couple return to Australia as the girlfriend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[119,41],"class_list":["post-7274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","tag-horror","tag-reading-and-repentance"],"yoast_head":"\n"Wish You Were Here": It's a Thriller. 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