Suspension (2008)

• Directed by Alex Joler and Ethan Shaftel
• Produced and written by Aris Blevins
• Starring
  • Scott Cordes
  • Anne Tedesco
  • Caroline Vinciguerra
  • Dan Nichols
  • David Fritts
• Executive produced by Ethan Shaftel

The longer I’ve done this reviewing thing, it seems, the more miserly I am with my praise. What used to impress the wide-eyed fanboy of his twenties simply doesn’t break the crust of the hardened movie critic staring down the barrel at forty.¹ So when I say that Suspension is absolutely the best independent movie I’ve seen in a year, it should mean a lot more to you than if every week brought praises of “the BEST THING EVAR!!1!” Suspension is the rare movie which is completely professional and confident while also being utterly un-Hollywood. Even more impressive is that it takes a gimmick worthy of a third-string Twilight Zone ripoff and makes it the centerpiece of a compelling story.

Dan Bennett (Scott Cordes) is a forty-something family man who, with his wife, is taking his son to college for the first time. Sarah (Annie Tedesco) is a pretty young teacher about to start educating the seventh grade, whose husband just happens to be traveling the same road as the Bennetts. In fact, you could make the case that it is her cellphone call to her husband which causes the horrendous accident that the two vehicles have. No, you don’t see the accident. Not exactly. But at the moment of impact, time stands still for Dan. He even gets out of the crumpled vehicle, flying objects and auto body parts suspended in the air as if in amber, and walks around, puzzled. The next thing he knows, he wakes up in the hospital several days later. His wife and son are dead, as is the other driver.

Yeah, that’ll buff out.

When he gets out of the hospital, which is itself closing down, he can do nothing more than putter. Eventually he sets himself to repairing the videocamera which his son was using at the time of the crash, so he can review their last moments together, as well as some of the other recorded family moments. But in doing so, he eventually discovers that the camera has taken on a bizarre ability: when he pauses the tape, the entire world pauses as it did during the accident, leaving only him free to move around.

The novelty of it gives him something to take his mind off his loss. But the hospital is clamoring for payment of his bills, and his attorney’s moving ahead with a lawsuit against the other driver’s estate to recover money — which really means against Sarah. When he first sees her at a deposition and sees that she’s hurting at least as badly as she is, he can’t find it in himself to push forward with the lawsuit, or with much of his life.

“The good news is, your ear is intact.”

Instead, he puts the videocamera to personal gain. Nervously at first, but with growing confidence, he “pauses” in a store full of people and starts lifting money out of their wallets — a ten here, a twenty there — until he has six thousand dollars to pass along to his attorney for legal and medical costs. He avoids his friends and neighbors; in fact, he breaks into the now-closed hospital and sets up shop in the spacious if vacant accommodations. He carries the camera with him everywhere, pausing time at his convenience.

And he starts keeping tabs on Sarah. Not out of any malice, but because he feels oddly protective of her. First it’s simply a casual contact, walking by her house and checking in the windows. But when the school asks Sarah to take some time off at home, he becomes more intrusive — fixing things around the house, replacing her torn sweater, replacing a plate she broke. All well-intentioned things, but things that still creep Sarah out when she realizes that someone has been in her house.

I think the casting call might actually have used the word “wistful.”

Why did the school ask Sarah to take some time off? Unknown to Dan, the “pause” button affects her differently than it does other people (possibly because she was on the phone with her husband when the accident first happened?). She still freezes, like everyone else, but her eyes quiver while the rest of her is immobile, and she is stricken immediately afterward with a fierce headache, or simply drops unconscious. The school considers her temporarily unfit for the classroom, so she’s going stir-crazy in her house, trying not to give into the paranoia that Dan’s actions are inadvertently causing — a paranoia that is exacerbated by the fleeting glimpses she has of him when she’s “paused,” glimpses which start showing up in her dreams.

The first masterful part of this production that you notice is its deft visual handling. Between the cinematography, the editing, and the various techniques used to render a “pause” — everything from digitally inserting Dan into a still image, to “bullet time” techniques, to the simple expedient of other actors holding still — the gimmick is rendered entirely believable. There are no greenscreen lines or other camera tricks visible to place weight on our suspension of disbelief; it all looks completely natural. (Never underestimate the value of sound to such an illusion, either.) This is not a movie that could have been made ten or twenty years ago; now the technical ability is within the grasps of independent filmmakers.

“I’ve heard of games being suspended, but this is ridiculous!”

But once the admiration for the technical wizardry has subsided, you realize that this is not a movie which coasts on the gimmick. The acting is top-notch; Scot Cordes as Dan is a perfectly believable everyman, a plain and overweight “normal person” who is given an odd ability on top of traumatic experience and uses it slowly to withdraw into an existence of his own making. Even when (spoiler alert!) his grip on reality slips away in the final act, he’s never an evil person; he’s a person who is simply unprepared by his normal life to navigate this circumstance. Annie Tedesco as Sarah is also believable in such a way that her very obvious good looks don’t take away from the believable, non-Hollywood feel.

And the script is very non-Hollywood, in a good way; it doesn’t show the fingerprints of all the “sure-fire” formulas that get tacked onto a screenplay destined for studio backing. From the non-A-lister lead required, to the low-key manner with which suspense is dealt, to the simple morality that Dan exhibits (twice, he’s in a situation where he’s aware of a “paused” woman close by, naked or close to it, and both times he hesitates only slightly before going about his business), it’s the kind of a script that not only can by produced outside of Hollywood these days, but has to be.

Never pick a fight with someone who can hit you faster than your internal organs can bounce back.

I’m happy and grateful that I saw this movie (and sorry that it took so long to work its way up through the pile of screeners), and I will loudly tout it to all who will listen as indie done right.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 5
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 3
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Craig Benton (“Locksmith”) played “Crewman Davis” in the TNG episode “Violations”

1. It’s a pretty long barrel at this point, but still.[back]