Paranoia (1998)

One of my all time favorites.

Just perfect...

Excellent but underrated film

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

PARANOIA is a pretty uninteresting late addition to the run of psycho-thriller movies that had begun with FATAL ATTRACTION over a decade previously. This story has a young woman, played by Brigitte Barko who gives an indifferent performance, the sole survivor of a massacre by a serial killer which slaughtered her family. Years later, she's trying to live a normal life when she discovers that the killer is about to be released on parole. This low budget oddity singularly fails to deliver any thrills or suspense, but the narrative structure is quite interesting and there are enough twists to keep you mildly involved. The great Larry Drake, best known as the baddie in DARKMAN, gives the best performance as the killer.

To be honest, I mostly rented this to get a glimpse of one of my favorite almost-completely-unknown actors, Stephen Gevedon. After the first few minutes of truly horrendous dialog, I watched it on fast-forward until Stephen appeared! But one thing I will give this movie: it has a twist ending that's actually GOOD, makes sense, and works well. Ms. Bako is very beautiful and does her best with the aforementioned bad dialog. Sally Kirkland tries her best, but does not succeed very well. Larry Drake does his "I'm not Benny from L.A. LAW" serial killer thing. (This is not a spoiler; he is on the poster brandishing a big ol' knife.) I wish I could give this 2 1/2 stars on Netflix, but your choices are only 2 or 3, so I gave it 2.

This movie is a big joke. First off, the acting is horrible, the look of the movie--it has the look of a very VERY low budget movie. The actors are miscast horribly. I could go on for days. Anyhow...the movie is fake. I mean, you have a girl named Jana who is the only survivor when her entire family is killed by a serial killer. We see this happen, and then we see her much later in life. She lives alone in an apartment, and usually stays locked up during the day, all paranoid and stuff...only contact with the outside is when she has her online therapy sessions with a female doctor. She is supposed to be this woman who was so traumatized, and her life is totally screwed up because of what happened. Does she act paranoid and mentally unbalanced like she should? Nope. She pretty much acts like a normal everyday person...she works out of her home as an architect and designer, but she goes out at night to meet with some guy she's working with. All alone in New York City, I think...and she's fine going out at night all alone. No way. Not only that, but she meets some guy who says he lived two houses down from her when her parents were killed, and the day she meets she tries to have sex with him...lets the guy into her apartment right away, etc. She should be untrusting of people...she even tells the guy herself that she can't ever trust people...yet she lets the guy in her bed the first day they see each other after 20 + years. Yea right...The serial killer, who is now in prison, contacts Jana from prison. Funny thing--I never knew they gave prisoners laptop computers with internet access and fax machines. Wow! Anyhow...the guy contacts her, and she freaks out because of it...so she calls the corrections agency and they say--oh he was only sentenced to twenty years. 20 years for 3 murders? Wrong. The funny thing is, when Jana calls--she was surprised to see how much time he had left in prison. If her family was murdered, don't you think she would have known how long he was put away? It goes on from here--and it gets dumber and dumber. This movie is horrible. If you ever see it in the rental place, STAY AWAY! I hate this movie so much, I think I;m going to contact the writer, and tell him to leave Hollywood, and do it quickly! .05/10

I rented the film Paranoia expecting a much better film. I felt that the plot was very weak. I expected a scary thriller and this movie did not scare me in the least. I did think the acting was good but the plot was terrible. I did, however, enjoy the line that was something like "Do whatever you want Jana...I have some Chinese food that's getting cold." I also thought the big black guy that was only in two scenes was interesting. What was his purpose?