This is a fear materialized--the kind of fear we all slightly feel toward the shopping mall photo labs. The time of stalkers, indeed. And when they try to be too intimate, we can't but be defensive. But our photos are in their hands, all exposed, vulnerable, defenseless... like a child.
Robin Williams is super again as a psycho (as we have seen in Insomnia), gentle and calm, with hidden violence and weird obsessions. It's very American, very sick. And near the end we learn what is behind the protagonist's personal history; a sexually abused childhood for which photography played a cruel role.
It's well thought, well executed, but this psychological explanation rather puts me off. But then, the director Romanek did have a social message. With more and more family photos taken digitally, the high-speed photo processing is almost a history. We don't know what's taking place behind our social facade. Who's taking advantage of whom, manipulating images.
It's gluesome to think about, but this film is already a kind of testimony to a culture outliving its destiny.
