100 Feet (2008)

The movie begins with Marnie Wilson (Famke Janssen), arriving home after being released from an unknown prison sentence, for one year of house arrest. She stabbed her abusive Cop husband to death after he came at her with a knife and she managed to get it away from him to defend herself. She had filed many complaints about the abuse but his cop friends didn't take her seriously. She obviously was found guilty since she went to prison and has now been released to house arrest. The title of the movie - 100 Feet - refers to the distance she can travel. Marnie must always be within 100 feet of the ankle monitor box that hangs in her home. If she goes outside 100 feet, the ankle monitor beeps and she has 3 minutes to get back inside or the police are called.

The movie doesn't waste much time introducing the audience and the lead character (Marnie) to the ghost of her late husband who apparently haunts the house and wants her to pay for what she did. He is violent and takes pleasure in scaring her and physically hurting her - for example, he throws her down the flight of stairs and also hits her in the face. The ghost is NOT invisible.. it's not some force that can't be seen and the fear is supposed to come from the unknown. The movie creates the ghost and we can see his shape/face/body and at times it IS scary. The movie plays with this by having his image pop up with quick camera shots in the dark.

Ed Westwick plays Joey, a young man from the neighborhood who befriends Marnie and is someone who she can talk to and who runs errands for her such as getting books from the library and groceries from the supermarket. Bobby Cannavale plays a cop who was the partner of Marnie's husband. He can't let what happened go and he obsessively camps outside the house to keep an eye on Marnie inside.

Famke Janssen's performance in this movie was fantastic. The actual movie was average in execution and it had an ending that lessoned the film especially with the over the top CGI effects which IMO were just too much in the final scenes (it wasn't a problem for 95% of the movie though) but Famke really stepped it up making the movie almost mesmerizing at times. Her fear and grief and determination were palpable and she really sold the character she was playing. Just a great job from her overall.

I saw this movie last night when it was on SyFy. I happened to flip the channel and quickly decided to watch. I am glad I did. I gave this movie a 6 out of 10 b/c it was enjoyable and well acted but it wasn't brilliant by any means and the over the top ending ruined it a bit for me. I still recommend seeing this movie and there is a really crazy (in a good way) fight scene that is worth checking out.