Word: caine
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TITLE: RAISING CAIN...
...problem shared by Single White Female and Raising Cain, two new evil- twin horror movies, is that the characters in them apparently haven't seen any movies. Just by having caught Fatal Attraction, Allie Jones (Bridget Fonda) in Single White Female could have avoided a lot of the grief she suffers at the hands of her roommate-from-hell Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh). If Hedy's possessive rages hadn't given Allie a hint, the dead pet would have. And in Raising Cain, none of the cops has seen Psycho. Otherwise they might have been suspicious of that tall creature...
Viewers' familiarity with the gore genre has never bothered Brian De Palma. He has been considered a Hitchcock groupie for so long that, by now, the slur seems like a badge. The plot of Raising Cain -- about a child psychologist (John Lithgow) still under the spell of his mad-scientist father and an evil twin named Cain -- swipes from Psycho and Michael Powell's sicko classic Peeping Tom. What's fun here is that De Palma has rung cunning changes on Hitchcockian twists. What if the car that Norman Bates watched sink into the swamp had a woman inside, clawing...
Movies can convince us of the impossible; they have trouble with what Hitchcock called "the implausibles." Both Single White Female and Raising Cain too often beg the question "Why would such a smart person do such a stupid thing?" Single White Female gets its best thrills early on, when Hedy is falling in love with Allie -- and filling the void inside both of them. Sisterhood never looked so vulnerable. "You haven't been yourself," Allie says to Hedy. "I know," her would-be twin replies. "I've been...
Taussig easily claims the title of most theatrically fluent and effective performer for her portrayal of everything from a fragile changeling in Eden to a violent Cain. Michael Wertheim is effective as the insecure Adam, and Walling smoothly transforms the self-assured Eve into a dependent and nurturing mother. Vanessa Parise deserves praise for her convincing portrayal of the Snake with the draconian character which includes Eve to succumb to temptation...