Visiting Hours - Lisa's Review

*** SOME SPOILERS ***

I struggled this week with why on earth this movie found its way onto the Nasties List.  It would be much better suited as a Sunday afternoon movie.  There is little in the way of gore or graphic scenes in the movie to complain about, so I'm at a loss.  There is a scene which sexualises a knife torture and rape, which I suppose is a bit in bad taste, but I've seen worse before the watershed I'm sure.

That's not saying its a bad movie.  It's not too bad.  I found it remarkably easy to watch and there wasn't that much in the way of irritation for me.  It had crazy inconsistencies, most notably a scene at the start of the movie where our lead lady (Deborah) is on air (she's on a talk show) making her views clear on the conviction of a woman who finally fought back against her abusive husband.  As she pulled no punches and her comments were close to libelous, her boss advised her they would be unable to air the episode.  Whats odd about this is at the same time as we are watching the scene, we are shown our movie villain who is at home watching the airing of this same show???
Anyways, if you can put that aside that glaring inconsistency, its watching this show that sparks our killer (Colt Hawker) off to stalk Deborah.  Seems he has followed her work for years and he is not her biggest fan as she is a big female activist and he is something of a misogynist (getting to be a remarkably familiar thing in these movies).  What I also failed to mention is that the woman in question who was being defended by Deborah for fighting back against her husband (by throwing a pan of hot oil around him hence disfiguring him for life) is actually Hawkers mother.  The husband is of course his father.  He has never forgiven his mother for what she did to his father and basically just thinks that she should put up and shut up.

The movie follows Hawker tracking down Deborah.  He finds her, manages only to wound her (we have another knife through door scene here) as they are interrupted so she is taken to recuperate in hospital, hence our title.  Hawker keeps up his pursuit and a young nurse Sheila is dragged into the mix, probably mostly because she shares Deborahs feminist views.  There are a few kills, including of the wrong person.  Breathing tubes are cut to detract attention away from him.

The story which follows is pretty normal for a murder thriller and is very predictable, but like I said its easy to watch as the acting is pretty solid.  The ending is very TV movie, but I wasn't left feeling like i'd wasted an hour and a half which I have with other movies.

I wouldn't say don't watch this movie, but I would say, if you're looking for gore, horror, shocks or anything remotely graphic, this isn't the place to look.

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