One Hour Photo – Film Review

Armed with all the knowledge about photography, Seymour “Sy” Parrish (Robin Williams) makes a living by developing photos at a department store. A lonely man, soon he gets obsessed with a family who are regulars at his counter.

“Family photos depict smiling faces… births, weddings, holidays, children’s birthday parties. People take pictures of the happy moments in their lives. Someone looking through our photo album would conclude that we had led a joyous, leisurely existence free of tragedy. No one ever takes a photograph of something they want to forget.”

This is one of the first of many powerful lines spoken in Mark Romanek‘s bone-chilling psychological thriller One Hour Photo – a film that’s not only masterfully directed, acted, and written, but so realistic that it’s scary. A scenario like this could easily happen in real life, and truth be told, while I was watching the film, it genuinely felt as though I were watching an actual couple being stalked and obsessed over by a photo technician.

Keep in mind, this is coming from somebody that is a massive Robin Williams fan. The whole time I was watching One Hour Photo, he almost completely disappeared into the role of Sy. Williams is remembered by nearly everybody as being one of the most wholesome, funny actors in history. It’s hard not to smile along with him while watching something such as Mrs. Doubtfire or Jumanji, but here, you will find yourself getting increasingly more disturbed by his performance as each minute ticks by in this extremely well-paced movie.

But you want to know what the strange part is? One of the elements that makes this film so fascinating and brilliant? The fact that, while you will undoubtedly be creeped out by Williams’ masterful performance as Sy, you will also find yourself sympathizing with him immensely.

You know that his actions are not good and they are certainly too far. No family would ever want to be stalked by somebody that they view as an innocent man that they sort of trust and no family deserves to have their privacy preyed on as Sy does throughout the course of One Hour Photo, but the film makes the wise decision to give the viewer little tidbits of information as to why Sy does what he does.

In short, he really just wants to be a part of a family – he wants to feel like he belongs somewhere. It’s stated fairly early on in the film that Sy is extremely lonely. His mother has passed away and it seems like his father is out of the picture, he doesn’t have any friends, and he doesn’t have relatives nearby and no wife or girlfriend.

Courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures

After his long day at work, he almost always heads home and sits in front of the television, mindlessly perusing through all the different channels until he falls asleep. All he wants is to have some good friends and to be a part of a family, which is why he starts to worm his way into the Yorkin’s lives but as the film ticks on, his actions get increasingly more disturbing and uncomfortable, resulting in one whopper of an ending that will surely give you goosebumps.

This is also just a masterfully directed film by Mark Romanek. After watching the film, I was thinking that some hugely famous and well-known director must have made it, but, alas, Romanek has only ever made three films throughout his career and this is one of them. Interestingly enough though, he did direct the music video for Taylor Swift‘s “Shake It Off” which is amazing. No wonder why that video is so well made.

One Hour Photo also utilizes its cinematography and colors in brilliant ways. Jeff Cronenweth‘s shots here are almost all wide shots and they tell stories of their own. Whenever there is a close-up shot of somebody’s face – usually Sy’s – it feels deeply important and that’s because it is.

And in terms of the color palette, it’s almost all browns, greys, blues, and whites. The film has an extremely clinical and hospital-esque feel to it. Almost like the colors you’d see in your local doctor’s clinic. The character of Sy is also almost always shown wearing the same color. For example, he usually wears a brown shirt, brown pants, and brown shoes in this film and the contrast is brilliant.

Plus it would be a sin to not mention the absolutely haunting musical score by composers Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek. It has a remarkable way of getting under the skin and it genuinely sneaks up on you – luring you in – and once it does, it attacks you. There were numerous sequences here that truly made me feel deeply unsettled and left me wanting to look away from the screen. Even in scenes that weren’t directly creepy. The score, cinematography, and color palette are characters of their own in One Hour Photo.

This movie is nothing short of masterful. So many other filmmakers, if they attempted to make this film, would have tried to make it a film with a plethora of twists and turns and they probably wouldn’t have done as good a job as Romanek did.

One Hour Photo is quite possibly one of the most simplistic psychological thrillers I have ever seen, but that’s part of the reason why it works as well as it does. It takes a simple concept and a simple question and unsettles you from the beginning all the way to the end. That question? What would you do if you felt as though you were being stalked by somebody that you knew? How would you deal with it?

I can only hope that this film gets some more recognition someday in the future because this still remains one of the most underrated Robin Williams films ever. If you have not yet seen it, I implore you to check it out because you’re missing out on one of the most effective thrillers out there.

Overall Grade: A+

MPAA Rating: R for sexual content and language

Cast: Robin Williams, Connie Nielsen, Michael Vartan, Gary Cole, Eriq La Salle, Clark Gregg, Paul H. Kim, Erin Daniels, Dylan Smith, Christina Magargle, David Moreland, Jim Rash, Nick Searcy

Directed by: Mark Romanek

Written by: Mark Romanek

Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures

Release Date: August 21, 2002

Running Time: 96 minutes