#$ While She Was Out Blu ray

Although "While She Was Out" boasts an original twist or two, you've basically seen it many, many times before. It's the one about the passive woman facing a threat so monstrous that she reaches down into her core and finds a transformative strength and rage she never knew she possessed. Think Jennifer Lopez in "Enough", Olivia de Havilland in "Lady in a Cage", Nicole Kidman in "Dead Calm", Debbie Reynolds in "Singin' in the Rain". (Just kidding on that last one.)



This time, Kim Basinger is the lady. An abused wife and mother, she goes to the mall on Christmas Eve, and leaves a note on a car taking up two spaces in a crowded lot. Predictably, the car belongs to a gang of four psychopathic toughs who kill the mall cop that comes to her rescue. She manages to escape in her vehicle, but wrecks it in a new property development surrounded by woods, and flees into the forest with her trusty tool box, the murderous gang hot on her heels.



All this might be kind of silly fun, except the screenplay asks the audience to stretch belief beyond the breaking point. Despite the enormity of the forest at night, the gang tracks her down by (no, I'm not making this up) picking up the lingering scent of her perfume and sweat in the air, by tracking little droplets of her blood, by shining their flashlight in just the right spot while she's standing in the open. Of course, she helps them out by whimpering and thrashing through the forest with as much noise as possible. Plus, she stands in the middle of a shallow stream and screams at the top of her lungs, "God! Where are you God?!!" ... hardly a smart thing to do if you're trying to avoid detection.



That the movie is even watchable is attributable to a fairly engaging performance by Kim Basinger as the lady in distress (she also co-produced) and a valiant effort by Lukas Haas as the leader of the gang. Haas has some of the worst dialogue ever written, and he almost ... almost ... manages to make it sound credible. There is also a wonderful payoff in the final shot of the film, and so it ends on an intriguing note. Unfortunately, these credits don't nearly begin to make up for the film's obvious detriments, and so I can't recommend a purchase. Rent it if you're a Basinger or Haas fan; otherwise, you might want to skip this one altogether.


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