A murdered model guides her twin sister from the afterlife to find her killer. RICHARD PHILLIPS-JONES watches Kim Cattrall and Christopher Lee in Double Vision 1992
TITLE: Double Vision
RELEASED: 1992
DIRECTOR: Robert Knights
CAST: Kim Cattrall (Caroline/Lisa), Gale Hansen (Michael), Macha Méril (Mrs. Perfect), Naveen Andrews (Jimmy), Christopher Lee (Mr. Bernard), Shane Rimmer (Caroline & Lisa’s Father), Barbara Windsor (Snow Queen Boss).
WRITER: Tony Grisoni, from a short story by Mary Higgins Clark
Review of Double Vision 1992
Soon-to-be-wed Caroline hasn’t seen her very different twin sister Lisa in some time. Despite the reservations of their father, Caroline wants her errant sibling to come to her wedding and flies from Massachusetts to London (where Lisa is ostensibly working as a model) in the hope of inviting her in person.
Making her way over the Atlantic with her fiancé Michael, Caroline starts to get visions of a grisly fate about to befall her sister and, indeed upon arrival finds herself at a morgue, identifying Lisa’s body. Then her sister’s voice calls out to her: “Caroline, don’t be scared… I need you, you can’t run away this time…”
Caroline hatches a plan to track down the killer by adopting Lisa’s identity, with her sister’s words intermittently guiding her: Is it smitten taxi driver Jimmy, who has taken Lisa all over the place for some dubious assignments (modelling and otherwise)? Is it Mr. Bernard, a prominent figure with whom Lisa has been having an affair? Or is it Bernard’s wife, who has actually been stage-managing the affair, employing Lisa for the task?
Or is it someone else?
A curious item this, a supernaturally tinged murder mystery somewhat freely adapted from a short story by the American suspense author Mary Higgins Clark, produced for Canadian pay-TV, with co-funding from France and Germany, but made in the UK, where it was fated to head straight to video.
With the above in mind, it may be a case of too many interested parties giving their input, along with a slender source being stretched to breaking point to pad out the required hour-and-a-half but Robert Knights (usually a dependable director of British television) struggles to bring anything out of a project which looks fine on paper but ends up as unengaging and leaden a piece as you’re likely to see.
Kim Cattrall tries her best with the hand she’s been dealt but the supernatural elements of the story are wholly underdeveloped and fall flat, occasionally intervening into the plot like an afterthought until a hurried, confused and frankly sloppily executed conclusion brings the whole thing juddering to a puzzling halt – it feels like you’re watching a rough cut rather than a finished product.
The big British names are there purely for marquee value: Barbara Windsor’s brief turn as the boss of a seedy modelling agency lasts all of 56 seconds whilst, ever the professional, Christopher Lee does a solid shift on his handful of scenes but isn’t given a great deal to work with and a moment where he kisses a latex-clad Cattrall leaves him looking somewhat ill-at-ease.
If the thought of that particular spectacle appeals to you then this might sound like just your movie but even that very small demographic will struggle to plod through the rest of Double Vision.
One final thought: When Lisa’s voice speaks to Caroline in the morgue, why doesn’t she just tell her who the killer is, there and then?
NOTES ON THE SOURCE: In Mary Higgins Clark’s 40-page story (from the anthology, The Anastasia Syndrome and Other Stories), the killer murders Lisa in error, five years prior to the events unfolding. Their motive is that Caroline was a fellow theatre student who (as a director) refused them a lead role in an adaptation of Death Of A Salesman.
As the anniversary of the deed approaches, the murderer vows to hit the right target this time but, as the two enter a battle of wits in Caroline’s New Jersey home, her sister’s voice appears from the afterlife, guiding her sibling to stop the killer striking again.
The original tale contains none of the sordid back-story of the screen adaptation – it’s anyone’s guess what Mary Higgins Clark made of it.
TRIVIA POINTS: A very early role for Naveen Andrews, some years away from global stardom in Lost (2004-10).
Gale Hansen had previously received good notices for his role in The Dead Poets Society (1989) but would go on to become a Hollywood studio executive.
Kate Winslet’s sister Anna appears briefly as Sandra, a model taking part in a photo shoot to promote a Greek shower manufacturer (a bizarre scene which really can’t be described adequately by mere words).
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