Fever (1999)

Waste of time

i must have seen a different film!!

Brilliant and touching

A Masterpiece!

Fever is a movie that appears very shallow at first glance, but is actually quite complex.The plot is a little confusing, but after a close look; not all that difficult to get. An artist (Nick Parker) is struggling to keep his job as an art instructor. After a grisly murder at his apartment, he begins to slip slowly into insanity.Henry Thomas was OK as Nick Parker. I think they could have gotten someone else to play him, but Thomas wasn't really bad, so to speak. David O'Hara (The Departed) was really good as Will, Nick's neighbor and new slightly insane, creepy friend. Probably my favorite character. Teri Hatcher was very good as Charlotte Parker, Nick's worried, caring sister. You really sympathize with her throughout the entire movie. Bill Duke (Predator) was also very good as Detective Glass.The lighting was what really set the mood for the film. As Nick's sanity vanishes slowly, scenes tend to be darker. And with a low-tone music score added to it, you have a very dark film.Not a bad film, see it before you judge it. 7/10.

**SPOILERS** Deep psychological suspense/drama set in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn with a murder of a landlord that later escalates into a world of insanity as well as the unknown for one of the tenant's in the building. Sidney Miskowitz, Sandor Tecsy, is found murdered in his apartment one late evening just hours before Sidney has a bitter argument with one of his tenants Leonard Wooley, Jon Tracy. It's later thought by the police and almost everyone else in the building that Wooley is Sidney's killer. One of the tenants in the building art teacher Nick Parker, Henry Thomas, was a witness to the fight between Sidney and Wooley and is later called by the police as their star witness in the murder. At first you think your watching a murder/police drama until Nick goes upstairs to talk to his new neighbor Will, David O'Hera. It's then that things really start to get weird. Nick asks Will, the night of the murder, that he's disturbing him in doing his work by making load noises and to please stop. Will lets Nick have it about it being none of his business to what he's doing and almost throws him out of his apartment. Later that morning when the police are called to investigate Sidney's murder Nick tells NYPD Det. Glass, Bill Duke, about Will living upstairs and being a possible suspect and is shocked to find that Will doesn't live there and In fact the upstairs apartment is empty! You then start to realize that this Will may just be a figment of Nicks imagination. We keep seeing Nick go upstairs and talk to Will, who supposedly is not there, and Will comes across as a man totally out of touch with reality.Will feels that the Nazis are in control of the world and that the ancient Gnostics are the real power behind every government on earth. This makes Nick, like those of us watching, feel that this guy is a can or two short of a six-pack when it comes to his mental reasoning. As the movie goes on it becomes apparent that Nick is suffering from some kind of breakdown but what exactly is causing it? Later Mrs. Miskowitz, Sidney's 80 year-old mom, is also found dead by Nick who's now sure that Will murdered her just like her son Sidney. Sometime later Nick looks out of his window and sees a crazed and disheveled looking Will leaving the apartment in a hush with his duffel bag. Nick is now certain that he must have murdered Mrs. Miskowitz, as well as her son Sidney, and is trying to escape from being arrested by the police. Quickly following Will onto the subway Nick Confronts Will between cars and ends up stabbing him to death. Scared almost to death himself Nick thinks that he was seen by a witness in the adjoining subway car stabbing Will and then makes his way outside on the street only to be picked up by the police! Not for Will's murder but for being a bit lost and out of his mind. It's not until the very last few minutes in the film that you realize just what's wrong with Nick; His past has finally caught up with him. Nick indeed did witness a horrible event but not of the Miskowitz's or of the imaginary Will but of someone very dear and close to him. It may very well have been the murder of Sidney Miskowitz being so close to home that brought all this out. Carrying this guilt with him all his adult life Nick tried to hide it in his subconscious mind all these years. When it finally broke out and he was at last forced to face what he did. It was that dark and deadly secret that Nick kept hidden so deeply from himself all that time that in the end, when it finally resurfaced, drove Nick to lose not only his mind but later even his life.

I was completely unprepared for this surprisingly well made thriller. The films stars Henry Thomas as Nick Parker a struggling painter living in a realistically terrible New York Apartment building. Nick lives at the poverty line, his only income being continuing education classes he teaches at a community college. Early in the film a terrible murder occurs in his building and Nick and the audience spend the rest of the film coming to terms with what may have really happened.The film was written and directed by Alex Winter, most famous as the star of The Bill and Ted films, from this effort he has great promise to become a major director. He works extremely well here with the actors getting good performances from Thomas, Teri Hatcher, Bill Duke and David O'Hara. It is the cinematography by Joe DeSalvo that lifts this film to the level of something truly special. DeSalvo manages to capture shots of the New York skyline that seem unprecedented in American film and his interior work is remarkable evocative and reminiscent of the very best work of Gordon Willis and John Alonzo. Surprisingly this is the last film DeSalvo has made (it is now 2003) I am not sure why this is, but, one hopes he will have a long and prosperous c

Winter doesn't seem to have his head around the screenplay for "Fever", a dark and morose drama about a young, disturbed NYC slum dwelling artist (Thomas) who is caught up in a trio of murders . The film paints a portrait so nebulous as to leave many questions unanswered as it plods toward an unsatisfying conclusion with a sort of Hitchcockesque style. Unfortunately we're not given reason to care about the principle and are left to wait for the other shoe to drop all the way to rolling credits. "Fever" is an okay watch technically and artistically which offers solid performances. However, the screenplay misses opportunities to put more meat on the bones of a story with unrealized potential. Okay fodder for couch potatoes into quirky film noir psychodramas.