Paranoia (1998)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

PARANOIA is a pretty uninteresting late addition to the run of psycho-thriller movies that had begun with FATAL ATTRACTION over a decade previously. This story has a young woman, played by Brigitte Barko who gives an indifferent performance, the sole survivor of a massacre by a serial killer which slaughtered her family. Years later, she's trying to live a normal life when she discovers that the killer is about to be released on parole. This low budget oddity singularly fails to deliver any thrills or suspense, but the narrative structure is quite interesting and there are enough twists to keep you mildly involved. The great Larry Drake, best known as the baddie in DARKMAN, gives the best performance as the killer.

This movie was weird!! This psycho killer Calvin(Larry Drake, whom I surprised wasted his talent on this one)kills a little girl's family. The little girl manages to escape from being killed by hiding in the hallway closet. Anyways, the killer gets only 20 years in jail for killing three people(Yeah right, he would've gotten the chair or something but then it wouldn't be a movie)and after the girl is grown up, the killer manages to contact her via email.(I never knew they let prisoners have laptops and access to the internet. Impossible? Only in Hollywood)So the killer gets out of jail and stalks her so that he can kill her and finish the job. The ending was the most pointless and dumbest endings I've ever seen in a movie, and the scene where the killer(Drake) is having sex with a teenaged boy in the woods, is beyond gross.(Makes you think, was he a killer or a perverted child molester?) The beginning was pretty good and the rest was just a waste of time. If you have absolutely nothing else to watch, then maybe this movie might do!!

This movie is a big joke. First off, the acting is horrible, the look of the movie--it has the look of a very VERY low budget movie. The actors are miscast horribly. I could go on for days. Anyhow...the movie is fake. I mean, you have a girl named Jana who is the only survivor when her entire family is killed by a serial killer. We see this happen, and then we see her much later in life. She lives alone in an apartment, and usually stays locked up during the day, all paranoid and stuff...only contact with the outside is when she has her online therapy sessions with a female doctor. She is supposed to be this woman who was so traumatized, and her life is totally screwed up because of what happened. Does she act paranoid and mentally unbalanced like she should? Nope. She pretty much acts like a normal everyday person...she works out of her home as an architect and designer, but she goes out at night to meet with some guy she's working with. All alone in New York City, I think...and she's fine going out at night all alone. No way. Not only that, but she meets some guy who says he lived two houses down from her when her parents were killed, and the day she meets she tries to have sex with him...lets the guy into her apartment right away, etc. She should be untrusting of people...she even tells the guy herself that she can't ever trust people...yet she lets the guy in her bed the first day they see each other after 20 + years. Yea right...The serial killer, who is now in prison, contacts Jana from prison. Funny thing--I never knew they gave prisoners laptop computers with internet access and fax machines. Wow! Anyhow...the guy contacts her, and she freaks out because of it...so she calls the corrections agency and they say--oh he was only sentenced to twenty years. 20 years for 3 murders? Wrong. The funny thing is, when Jana calls--she was surprised to see how much time he had left in prison. If her family was murdered, don't you think she would have known how long he was put away? It goes on from here--and it gets dumber and dumber. This movie is horrible. If you ever see it in the rental place, STAY AWAY! I hate this movie so much, I think I;m going to contact the writer, and tell him to leave Hollywood, and do it quickly! .05/10

Jane Mercer is the sole survivor after the serial killer has brutally slaughtered her family. The girl is living in fear and loneliness isolated from the whole world. The only contiguity is her brief interviews with the shrunk and Internet. Until the night when someone has established communication with Jane via computer. She realizes that her interlocutor is the ruthless murderer who has killed her family. And to her horror she finds out that he is going to be released from his confinement very soon.