Stay confuses with knotty plot

Amanda Bates Guest Writer

Recent thrillers, inspired by the enormous success of films like The Sixth Sense, have conditioned viewers to watch for the big twist ending that brings all the threads of the plot together. When such an ending fails to adequately explain what has just happened in the story, and in fact only adds to the confusion, as does the finish of Stay, it can effectively ruin what might have otherwise been a passable movie-going experience.

Stay, directed by Marc Forster, who also directed the Oscar-winning dramas Finding Neverland and Monster’s Ball, has a slick, atmospheric look which evokes the muted color scheme and claustrophobic close-ups of other successful psychological thrillers. For a while, the plot even has the potential to be interesting enough to match the visual style.

Unfortunately, the confusing plot-turns, like the ceaseless visual trickery onscreen, grow tiresome and the story line ends up going nowhere.

The film concerns a New York City psychiatrist Sam Foster, portrayed joylessly by the usually lighthearted Ewan McGregor, whose normal patients are “neurotic stockbrokers” and the like. Filling in for another psychiatrist who is suspiciously unreachable, Sam takes on the patient Henry Letham (Ryan Gosling), a suicidal art student with very little sense of propriety. Henry hears voices and makes uncannily accurate predictions about the future, so it’s no big surprise when Sam starts having spooky experiences outside of his meetings with Henry.

In addition to the supernatural occurrences that Henry’s presence brings, including the usual assortment of mistaken identities and ghosts (and some admittedly clever time-warp sequences), Sam also has to contend with his own troubled art teacher girlfriend, Lila, played by Naomi Watts. Lila’s gone off her antidepressant medication, much to the horror of Sam, who has presumably prescribed it for her, because she claims it hampers her artistic ability. Lila takes an unusually intense interest in Sam’s new patient, and he finds himself reluctantly violating standard patient-doctor confidentiality agreements for the sake of communication with her.

Predictably, as the movie shifts to Sam’s frantic attempts to locate Henry before he can off himself, Sam finds the lines between reality and fantasy beginning to blur, and discovers that he and Henry are beginning to have more and more in common. The film attempts to portray these shifts visually, and often times is genuinely successful in doing so. Some images, such as an apartment with “Forgive me” scrawled over all four walls in such an orderly way that it appears to be a wallpaper pattern, are quite effective. However, the seeming inability to transition between scenes without some kind of clever visual trick, such as when a scene with Henry standing in a park becomes a still photograph on a table in Sam’s apartment, is cool at first, but becomes irritating after the technique is repeated so many times.

Stay uses confusing images and plot events, and compels its viewers to try and guess what shocking twist is in store, rather than experience what is currently happening onscreen. Many of the hints towards what the reversal may be echo those of other, better films such as Fight Club and The Sixth Sense. Fortunately, viewers won’t have to worry about correctly guessing what surprise the ending has in store, because the big twist makes very little sense with the rest of the movie. Stay means to question viewers’ perceptions of reality, but because of its nonsensical ending, which raises more questions than it answers, the film just seems dumb.