CLOSE YOUR EYES

CLOSE YOUR EYES is proof that horror doesn't have to be wholly unpredictable in order to work very well. This adaptation of Madison Smartt Bell's novel DOCTOR SLEEP, directed by Nick Willing from a screenplay by Willing and William Brookfield, has echoes of everything from THE MEPHISTO WALTZ to DON'T LOOK NOW and a lot of others besides, yet it has a feeling of freshness that comes almost entirely from the filmmakers' and cast's sincerity. They find all of this unnerving and scary and arrange for this to do the same. More, we wind up caring about the main characters, so that even if we guess the game early on, we still don't know and worry about what will happen to the people involved.

Goran Visnjic plays Michael Strother, a hypnotherapist who specializes in helping people quit smoking. Michael, who has a wife (Miranda Otto), a young daughter and another child on the way, is based in London, but he's there under the immigration radar. It's his very bad luck, therefore, to inadvertently reveal that he's had a glimpse into the mind of a patient who turns out to be police detective Janet Losey (Shirley Henderson). Losey is working on a case that's in desperate need of a breakthrough a serial killer with a really weird, nonsexual m.o. is capturing and killing children for reasons unknown. The police have caught what would seem to be a break the killer's latest intended victim (Sophie Stuckey) has escaped, but psychological trauma has rendered her mute. Losey enlists the very reluctant Michael in trying to get the little girl to open up and/or see into her memories.

There's something reassuringly British in both the soundness and the substance of CLOSE YOUR EYES' structure, which plays fair with its clues and creepy revelations. The production design, with its old churches and below-street-level rooms, creates a good sense of tension on its own, and Willing and Co. come up with some moments of real horror.

The cast is also absolutely on the money. Visnjic conveys a real sense of a gentle man trying to be a solid presence for his family, even though he's a haunted soul well before Losey drags him into a further nightmare. Henderson is petite but convincingly tough, with moments that suggest her Losey is a spiritual sister to Helen Mirren's troubled, capable Jane Tennison in PRIME SUSPECT. Otto injects nuance and humor into what could be a stock role as the perturbed spouse and Paddy Considine has deadpan fun with a conspiracy theorist who becomes part of the investigation. Fiona Shaw is appropriately haughty as an expert consulted by Losey and Michael. Novelist Bell shows up in a cameo as one of Michael's other patients and Colin Farrell appears briefly as a guard at a theatre.

CLOSE YOUR EYES won't surprise anyone who is acquainted with its particular subgenre of horror, but it is so atmospheric, intense and emotional that it winds up being quite satisfying all the same.