Looking Glass (2018) – Review

Where to watch Looking Glass

3 Stars

After years of toiling in B-Movies that went largely unseen, it seems that 2018 might be the year that Nicolas Cage becomes relevant to mainstream audiences again. I love the actor. I’ve followed him through all the various stages and genre changes that have come to define his nearly undefinable career thus far. Now, the Oscar-winning thespian is starting to receive rave notices for his manic portray in Mom and Dad and the hallucinatory Mandy. In, Looking Glass, Cage is back to playing an anxious everyman who revels in his voyeuristic tendencies and becomes part of a hellish game.

Ray (Nicolas Cage) is an electrician turned motel owner, who stumbles upon a hidden crawl space that gives him a line of sight into occupied rooms. His wife has unsuccessfully tried to convince him that this new venture will be a positive life-changing experience for the couple. But when a blond vixen shows up and rents a room Ray can help but spy on the lovely looking woman. He’s titillated by the stranger’s sexual exploits with another woman, but when the guest turns up missing Ray may be the only one who can find identify the murderer. As a stranger in a new town Ray and his wife become pariahs and prime suspects in the case.

There are shades of Psycho and other mind-screw flicks throughout director Dori Oskowitz’s debut feature. Working from a screenplay by writers Jerry Rapp and Matthew Wilder, who co-authored Cage’s unhinged Dog Eat Dog, the creative team do a fine job mix the sympathetic grieving nature of Ray with his off-putting voyeurism. Looking Glass isn’t the best of the three Cage movies I’ve seen in the last quarter, but it’s a tawdry, guilty pleasure that is pulled off with considerable panache.

Stars: Nicolas Cage, Robin Tunney, Marc Blucas
Director: Dori Oskowitz