Too bloody for the art-house crowd but way too arty for the average gorehound, photographer Cindy Sherman's directorial debut will have a tough time finding an appreciative audience. And that's a shame: Sherman's film is a hilariously twisted, typically
postmodern take on the psycho-killer genre, and it's a hoot. Dorine (Carol Kane), a geeky, put-upon copy editor at "Constant Consumer" magazine, makes CARRIE look like an underachiever. After 17 years of faithful service, she falls victim to a round of corporate downsizing and must work from home.
But that's OK: When she accidentally electrocutes a particularly despicable male coworker, Dorine realizes she can take the whole office home with her, one corpse at a time. As a photographer, Sherman has long been fascinated by the allure of images and questions of female identification: She
first caught the art world's attention with a series of black-and-white stills from imaginary movies, in which Sherman herself appears made-over as a variety of female movie types. It's no surprise, then, that Sherman the filmmaker should be drawn to the highly codified horror flick. Her film may
not be as glaringly self-conscious as SCREAM, but she does have a lot fun toying with the conventions (even offering her own version of the requisite flashback to the traumatic event in the killer's past that explains everything), and she fills Dorine's office with the kinds of characters female
moviegoers are so often asked to identify with: the geek, the slut, the bitch, the victim, the psycho. And perhaps the artist, too: Isn't there something of the photographer in Dorine as she painstakingly arranges her growing collection of rotting corpses? Click. --Ken Fox
