Disc Reviews

Inconceivable (2017) DVD Review

• 28th Aug 2017

The latest thriller to star Nicolas Cage is the low budget big ambition thriller by first time director Jonathan Baker with a script by Chloe King. King hasn’t written a script since the small and charming British film, B. Monkey (1998) having previously written scripts for the awful cheesy soft erotic ‘Red Shoe Diaries’. Inconceivable is not a million miles away from these tacky erotic thrillers.

There are three people in the marriage central to the film. Brian (Cage) and Angela (Gina Gerson) seem to have it all, a perfect marriage and a lovely 4-year-old daughter, Cora. Both are doctors and Angela is considering going back to work. Cora befriends another girl, Maddie, the same age as her in the playground and through a mutual friend, Linda (Natalie Eve Marie) she introduces Angela to Maddie’s mother, Katie (Nicky Whelan). The pair hit it off straight away as their daughters get closer. Angela confides to Katie that she has had trouble conceiving and had several miscarriages before Cora was born, while Katie equally confides about her abused past. Angela, feeling sorry for Katie invites her to stay at their guest house in the garden. A short while later Angela catches Katie having sex with another woman (later to be revealed to be Linda). Katie and Linda had been having an affair for a while and when Linda tells her that Angela has asked her to be a surrogate for a new baby she murders her.

Now that Linda is dead, Katie becomes the surrogate for Angela’s baby and is soon pregnant. But Brian’s mother (Faye Dunaway) had been suspicious of Katie for a long time and now so too is Angela, but to the point where she starts to look crazy. Katie starts to appear like a devious monster and as Angela finds out more and more about Katie’s past and her motivations she uses her knowledge to entrap her.

This thriller is in many ways very similar to The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) but with an excess of twists and turns that admittedly keeps the film interesting but also makes it, dare I say it and excuse the pun, inconceivable. Dunaway is like some superior bourgeois savant in the film, but at least does look like her son Brian in they have both a laughable amount of plastic surgery that suitably keeps their faces stiff. Cage has little to do in the film, except have  a dumb expression on his face and is most certainly mis-cast and is clearly too old to be playing these kind of roles. And why is Nicolas Cage looking more like David Gest these days? These days fewer and fewer of Cage’s films are having the stamp of quality about them and, I am afraid to say this is a further addition to the drop in Cage’s career. Whelan as the villain of the piece is both sinister and equally has the look of normalcy about her, making her one of the few standouts in their glossy thriller that is more like ‘Red Shoe Diaries’ in the sunshine.

The title of the film has a double meaning, the suggestion that the main character can’t have children and the other meaning being the unbelievable plot. The only extra on the disc is a behind the scenes featurette in which the cast and crew talk about the film.

Chris Hick