"Alexandra's Project" begins masterfully, setting a dark and heavy mood long before the plot reveals itself. When the plot does reveal itself, it is done craftily, piece by piece, as if you were a bird being led into a trap one crumb at a time. This is exactly how the main character is trapped also.
For the first hour I loved this film and couldn't believe I had never heard of such an intelligent thriller before. This abruptly turned when the complex story quickly unravelled to a cheap rip off of every bad Hollywood cat-and-mouse flick ever made.
How did this happen? Because the lead character who, for the first half of the movie, was shown to be smart, resourceful and level-headed, turns into a whiskey swilling moron, gets drunk and spends the the last half of the movie soaking in self-pity while not taking the obvious actions to fix the situation.
That's what I mean in my title. You will be so aggravated at how dense the main character becomes that you will likely hurl your popcorn at the screen in disgust. Like in those cheap slasher flicks when the murderer is hiding in the house, and somehow the idiot victim decides it's a good idea to go into that dark room anyway. Cheap thrills are fun in cheap movies, but I was led to expect a bit more from this award-winning film.
The message of the film itself, offensive as it may be to some, wasn't what bothered me. The movie ridicules feminism by portraying the villain as a rabid, man-hating, feminist psycho. But my gripe isn't about that. My gripe is the fact that the villain's plan turned out to be totally half-baked, and only a total dolt would play into it. A simple call to the cops, and all the bad guys could've been traced, rounded up and punished. But no, instead let's get plastered on whiskey and feel sorry for ourselves until the end of time. As others have commented, the characters and their actions defy sensibility.
I actually recommend that you watch this film so you'll see how a great idea can come apart with shoddy writing. This movie will probably leave you feeling sickened, not by the plot or the director's message but simply by the director's ability to ruin an otherwise good idea. Four stars out of 10, only because it did keep me interested for an hour.
