Mute Witness begins strongly with a simple but intense set-up that has a mute American make-up girl accidentally getting locked in the decrepit Russian film studio in which she is working on a US film being directed by her brother-in-law. While trying to find her way out she inadvertently witnesses the filming of a snuff movie and subsequently finds herself hunted through the deserted studio's dimly-lit corridors. All of this is well paced and filmed the murder scene, like Hitchcock's famous shower scene, cleverly uses the viewer's imagination to provide the gory details and the film manages to create an increasingly claustrophobic atmosphere as the heroine's avenues of escape are systematically reduced.
Unfortunately, it can't sustain this level of tension for long, and once the plot is opened out things start to unravel. For some unfathomable reason, writer/director Anthony Waller decides to introduce a 'comedy' element in the guise of the heroine's film director brother-in-law, and the whole thing nearly falls apart completely as he and his wife (the heroine's sister) are given increasingly larger amounts of screen time.
The story grows a little confused as it widens from a lady-in-peril thriller to more of a conspiracy plot involving a shadowy figure called The Reaper (Alec Guinness in a cameo he filmed about nine years before the rest of the film was shot!) and police complicity in the snuff trade, and by its climax, Waller has thrown in so many twists and red herrings to try and disguise some glaring plot holes that you're left deflated by thinking about what could have been.. Waller was obviously trying to deliver a Hitchcock homage, but this is all the evidence you need that aiming for Hitch on your debut effort is aiming way too high.
Unfortunately, it can't sustain this level of tension for long, and once the plot is opened out things start to unravel. For some unfathomable reason, writer/director Anthony Waller decides to introduce a 'comedy' element in the guise of the heroine's film director brother-in-law, and the whole thing nearly falls apart completely as he and his wife (the heroine's sister) are given increasingly larger amounts of screen time.
The story grows a little confused as it widens from a lady-in-peril thriller to more of a conspiracy plot involving a shadowy figure called The Reaper (Alec Guinness in a cameo he filmed about nine years before the rest of the film was shot!) and police complicity in the snuff trade, and by its climax, Waller has thrown in so many twists and red herrings to try and disguise some glaring plot holes that you're left deflated by thinking about what could have been.. Waller was obviously trying to deliver a Hitchcock homage, but this is all the evidence you need that aiming for Hitch on your debut effort is aiming way too high.