The problem with the "unreliable narrator" in this movie was that it was an attempt to "trick" the audience rather than a subtle story-telling device.
No, it's intended to trick the person hearing the story, in this case, Agent Doyle. The audience just isn't privy to any more information than Doyle is.
The fact that a "cheap" trick like that is needed to make the movie work, followed by the other twists does leave the movie feeling like it wasn't particularly well written. Well, not that it wasn't well written, more that it failed to have the impact that movies like Fight Club and The Double did.
How exactly is this example of an unreliable narrator any different than Fight Club? The only difference is, you apparently liked one and disliked the other. But in the end, neither narrative works without the unreliable narrator.
The movie wouldn't work without the unreliable narrator, but only because being straight with Agent Doyle wouldn't have gotten Adam what he needed. If Adam just told a story about how he and his father saw and destroyed demons and that his brother was a demon, what reason would Doyle have to follow him to the Rose Garden? All this would have added up to would be Adam being put in a mental institution.
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Aidy
10 years ago
It is different from Fight Club because Fight Club at no point told the audience that, quite unequivocally, the narrator and Tyler were different people. Instead it was up to the audience to come to that erroneous conclusion by themselves, yet when watching it back the movie is littered with subtle hints that they are the same person. For example when Tyler is having sex with the girl at the squat and the phone rings, and when the narrator answers the sound of sex stops. It doesn't register on the first viewing, but on the second viewing you know the sound of sex stops because Tyler and the narrator are the same person and he took a break from the sex to answer the phone.
Frailty is totally different in that it deliberately and explicitly misleads the audience.
I agree the movie wouldn't work without an unreliable narrator, neither would Fight Club or The Double. However Fight Club didn't need to resort to the kind of trickery that Frailty did. Again I do agree this was partly due to the movie's plot requiring it; all I'm saying is that if you compare the use of an unreliable narrator in Fight Club and this movie then Fight Club leaves your mind blown, whereas Frailty makes you think "Meh, that was just cheap".
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