Dragonfly (2002)
Review by Doc Ezra
Film:
DVD:

Written by Brandon Camp, Mike Thompson, and David Seltzer
Directed by Tom Shadyac
Starring Kevin Costner, Kathy Bates, Ron Rifkin, Joe Morton, and Robert Bailey, Jr.

Features:

• Director's commentary
  
• Deleted scenes
  
• Making-of featurette
  

Rating: PG-13

Anamorphic: Yes.

My Advice: Rent it if you're a Costner fan (sorry), or just pass.

Joe Darrow's got a problem: his do-gooder Peace Corps doctor of a wife, pregnant with their first child, ran off to some backwater Third World nation, and got killed in a flood. Why, you might reasonably ask yourself, would a trained medical professional risk the life of her unborn child to unknown tropical fevers, merely to administer some vaccines to another village of natives, most of whom will be killed by roving drug cartel death squads? This question, and many others like it, will go unanswered in the wannabe thriller that is Dragonfly. Anywho, having thus recklessly endangered herself to death, Mrs. Darrow leaves Joe to cope with all this. Costner, doing his best deadpan hurt puppy-dog bit, is actually quite good in this part. He's always seemed, in my humble opinion, an actor that did incredibly well when matched carefully to a part, and incredibly poorly when he attempted to expand his boundaries.

Joe, perhaps predictably, has problems coming to grips with his wife's death. He begins having really bizarre experiences relating to his wife, things that seem like messages from beyond the grave (or perhaps from above the grave, as there are moments where it seems as if the story is trying to get you to believe she's not really dead). And, in true supernatural thriller form, the previously intelligent Joe begins doing really foolish things, like clamoring over terminally ill children, despite knowing this will get him fired. He acts in ways that others view as insane, despite knowing that he looks insane. Just once, I would like to see a film where the main character begins having supernatural experiences, and at no point forgets that he has to play it straight if he wants to stay out of the booby-hatch long enough to figure out what's what. But I digress.

Lots of little kids and other people that have Near Death Experiences begin telling Joe all about the conversations they had with his deceased spouse. Joe gets crazier. Joe chases down a nun with great knowledge of NDEs (also previously banned from the hospital because she couldn't play it straight). Joe inexplicably has the answer handed to him, and runs off to resolve the plot before everybody gets pissed and asks for their money back. In short (but not short enough), this movie is all build-up and no payoff. For ninety minutes you sit and watch the characters run back and forth over the same little tiny patch of territory, and then there's fifteen minutes where it all comes to a head, and the result is disappointing at best (though not as bad as I suspected it was going to be at one point).

Dragonfly wants to be so much creepier than it is. Unfortunately, when you waste lots and lots of screentime rehashing two or three basic ideas, you can't make a very tense movie. Tense movies move, and have plots that keep you guessing. There's only one riddle in this movie, and you make your guess at about twenty minutes into the picture, then sit around waiting for an hour to see if you were right. Not very exciting. The script just seems to have some vast gaping holes in it, including some logical inconsistencies and unlikely premises that are never adequately addressed. All of these story factors combine to make the whole thing seem even more contrived than it is.

The DVD presentation is decent enough, with some deleted material and a solid commentary from director Shadyac. No faulting him for this one--where it succeeds, it does so because of his composition and shot choices (though I imagine he shares that credit with the DP). The deleted scenes are all right, but they're a classic case of "why this scene got cut." Nothing terribly enlightening, inspiring, or interesting happening in the bonus footage. The featurette is a featurette; they're all starting to look the same these days, and I keep waiting for somebody to try something innovative, but I don't suspect anyone ever will.

So at bottom, Dragonfly isn't really so much a supernatural thriller. It's more like a supernatural character study. It lacks distinctly in the thrill department, and the supernatural department is borrowing all its chops from somewhere else. There was a possibility for real novelty in the storyline, but it gets bogged down in a glacially-paced script and a film that runs around in circles for a while before finally giving up and rushing a lame ending designed to elicit an emotional response from the hanky-clutching crowd.