Release: Carpenter

 

Carpenter
Genre: Drama/Mystery
Director: Richard Kelly
Writer: Roy Horne
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Melissa George, Zackary Arthur, Ever Anderson, Matthew Lillard, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne






Budget: $27,000,000
Domestic Box Office: $20,193,444
Foreign Box Office: $23,676,485
Total Profit: -$9,931,135

Reaction: We suspect this film didn't do much at the box office due to its difficulty to market - especially due to its lack of easy genre definition. At least it wasn't a complete bomb and stayed as a small loss for the studio accounts.

"Much like other films in director Richard Kelly's filmography, Carpenter is not a film that can be easily defined. Anchored by a great performance from Nicolas Cage, the story plays out like a hypnotic dream at times - which Kelly's direction and the Tangerine Dream soundtrack only play deeper into." - Dave Manning, Ridgefield Press

"Take parts of 'Take Shelter' with Richard Kelly's signature style and a quiet and subtly unsettled Cage performance which rivals his from PIG. Overall, you have a calmly disturbed movie. Horne gives the best abstract type story no one has reached since Obsession with a soundtrack that brings pins and needles vibes to a balanced degree."- Blake Bourne, Austin Chronicle

"I enjoyed Carpenter, but it's honestly difficult to describe exactly why that is. Carpenter feels like Noah's Ark through a Donnie Darko lense, which is just as weird as that sounds. Cage is great as a man driven by his obsession, even if he doesn't know why he is obsessed with building a boat. The Biblical imagery and parallels start out subtle, but slowly become more and more deliberate - a decision I have mixed feelings about."- Charlie Sage, HBC-TV

Rated R for language and thematic elements