Endings: Secret Window (2004)
Welcome back to Endings. If you can’t stick the landing the trick doesn’t count. Spoilers abound.
This was one of Linh’s Johnny Depp selections for Spooktober. By coincidence, it paired nicely with Identity, another festival pick with a fractured-identity twist. That overlap was not planned.
Stephen King writing about a writer. Shocking, I know. Secret Window, adapted from his novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, starts with a good story and gives Johnny Depp plenty to work with. I have not read the novella, so this is strictly about the movie.
Depp is terrific as Mort Rainey, and I was surprised by how much comedy he brings to the character. Watching with my wife, we laughed at several moments where I was not entirely sure a joke was intended. Maybe that is his natural magnetism. Maybe years of watching him swashbuckle around as a pirate have conditioned us to find him funny even when things are meant to be serious. Either way, it worked.
I think I had seen this years ago, but I had completely forgotten the ending. That made it a fun rediscovery, even though I figured out the twist (remembered it?) before the movie officially disclosed.
There are plot holes, and then there are plot Grand Canyons. Mort’s smoking history, the Pall Malls, Shooter’s habits, and the conveniently disappearing people around him began to add up. Here, the inconsistencies became so conspicuous I realized we were dealing with an unreliable narrator.
And there it is: John Shooter is Mort’s other self. Familiar territory, certainly, but still done well. When Depp puts on the hat and becomes Shooter, he sells it.
The supporting cast does good work, too. The sheriff was a particular highlight: heavy skepticism, good-old-boy common sense, and absolutely no interest in Mort’s nonsense. His final confrontation makes it clear that he knows what happened, even if he cannot prove it. Common sense gets the answer right, although justice was left unmet.
I also loved the very Stephen King business of “Shooter” becoming “shoot her.” It reminded me of “redrum”: a phrase repeated until it turns around and tells you something nasty. I cannot say how that compares with the novella, but it felt unmistakably King-like on screen.
Then there is the corn. Mort contentedly eating the crop growing over the graves of his wife and her lover is deliciously macabre.
For me, the ending tied things together neatly. Those apparent Grand Canyon-sized holes resolve into part of the trick rather than leaving me with major unanswered questions. The twist is solid, not incredible. I suspect plenty of viewers will catch it early: the movie invites us to wonder whether Mort is quite all there, even before we understand how far it goes. The execution is fun and reasonably tidy rather than inspired. Still, the important threads close without a lot of extra business, which made it satisfying, and a strong stopping point.
Twists: 7/10
Execution: 6/10
Satisfaction: 7.5/10
Bottom Line: A familiar reveal, a terrific Depp performance, and one nasty little final taste of darkness to close it all out. Nothing revolutionary, but the ending does the job.
AI editing disclosure
This review was heavily AI-edited using OpenAI gpt-6.1-sol through Hermes Agent. The opinions come from my spoken notes; the model organized and edited them. The scores are mine.