Spider

David Cronenberg's latest, adapted by Patrick McGrath from his eerie novel, is a mesmerizing immersion into the precariously unstable mind of a psychiatric patient who has just been released after 20 years in an asylum. Living in an orderly but cavernous and colorlessly dreary halfway house, the haggard, misshapen man (Ralph Fiennes) begins a journey--into his past and deep into his own mind--that threatens his tenuous grip on reality as fantasies and memories of his mother's murder haunt him. The director's preternatural talent for uncanny atmospherics permeates the film, but Spider is driven by extraordinary performances that stir visceral reactions from beginning to end. The usually handsome Fiennes is positively macabre, adopting warped posture, anguished expressions, and dreadfully taut hands to help create a sympathetic yet puzzling character whose inaudible compulsive muttering serves as an unnerving soundtrack to his disquieting internal trepidation. And Miranda Richardson is mind-blowing in several roles symbolically manifested in the fragmentation of Spider's mind (she is almost unrecognizable from character to character--a fact that becomes part of Spider's deciphering of his distorted psyche). An emotionally compelling puzzle and one of Cronenberg's best, most measured works, this is recommended. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by director David Cronenberg, the 12-minute featurette “Caught in the Spider's Web” on the cast, the nine-minute “Weaving the Web” making-of featurette, the eight-minute featurette “In the Beginning: How Spider Came to Be,” cast and crew filmographies, and trailers. Bottom line: a fine extras package for a solid chiller.] (R. Blackwelder)