Based on the monster best seller by Alice Sebold, we know the problem isn’t um, the book….Young, sad, and dead, Susan Salmon (Saiorse Ronan) hovers over her family with dark narrative passages that don’t translate well to the big screen. With one too many choppy moments, director Peter Jackson, yes, “Lord of the Rings” Peter Jackson, never gives us a chance to attach to any single scene, especially one as pivotal as when Susan’s parents learn that they’re child has just been murdered. Instead Jackson hops around like a “Lord of the Rings” hobbit. We’re left feeling as lifeless as a phantom ourselves and watching a film as though we too, are circling above. That said, when young Susan first realizes she’s been murdered, the scene moves ghost-like and with rapid speed throughout her backyard, through her home, to her room, and to her bathroom, calling out to parents (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) who are no longer there. In this moment of the films best five minutes, we’re led to believe that death is like a constant – a psychedelic dream and paralleling nightmare; something a murdered person can’t escape. It’s explained that Susan is in the ‘in-between” a place called limbo (thus her need to find her killer), find her body (lovely bones) and move on to a place called heaven (a Woodstock mirage she can’t ever seem to reach.) Stanley Tucci leaves his usual Holly-Golightly roles and takes on an incredible risky portrayal of the killer and neighbor, Mr. Harvey. Tucci is the right amount of evil and seedy we’d imagine in a pedophile. Susan Sarandon arrives on the scene as the alcoholic grandma giving the audience a relieving dose of comedy about midway through, but in the end, we want little Susan to move onto heaven even quicker than she does. One tiara
