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Of course, the “Halloween” similarities are most significant when it comes to the staging. This is a movie that loves revealing a character is being stalked, that somewhere in the background the villain has been waiting for them to move so they can reveal themselves.
The movie also has a chilling opening sequence, not going for the Steadicam POV of the “Halloween” cold open but for something that would come to look like inspiration for “Scream 2”: a killing in a movie theater as characters watch a horror movie. The victim? A woman some weeks away from getting married. As Len Gamble hears the news, he realizes it’s the man who killed his wife on their wedding day, a moment shown to the viewer in soft-focus flashbacks.
Another bride-to-be, college student Amy (Caitlin O’Heaney) is closing in on her impending marriage with trepidation — she’s actually in love with her kind of irritating ex Marvin (Don Scardino). She’s susceptible to horror movie paranoia, even during what should be the happiest time of her life. One of many great dread-inducing moments that could have been ripped from “Halloween” is when she looks at a storefront television video of herself. The second that she moves away from it, we see she’s been watched by the killer, Ray Carlton (Tom Rolfing).
What makes the movie really work is its low-key looks at women’s friendships and sexual desire, as well as its cozy sense of Staten Island suburban misery. Rather than steep the movie in explicit dread the whole way through, there are a number of lighthearted scenes that flesh out the characters. Amy’s friend Joyce (Patsy Pease) for instance, is having an affair with the philosophy professor Carl Mason (James Rebhorn), and it seems to be going well.
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