Being Film #30 for Hooptober 2023
Oh, Brian De Palma. You are a master craftsman, and you wear your quirks on your sleeves. Raising Cain features aggressive sex, men dressing as women (although this time not nearly as problematic as Dressed to Kill, although who am I to judge?), heightened scores and your signature split diopter shots, fish-eyed lenses and a truly bugnuts performance from John Lithgow. Sure, your plot is almost cartoonishly ridiculous, but you execute it with such a sense of style I really can’t complain.
What more can I possibly want from you?
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Dr. Carter Nix loves children, especially his daughter Amy. His wife Jenny is concerned: he spends all his time with her, having given up his illustrious child psychology career to raise and study her. Problem is, Carter had a weird evil father who may have conducted some twisted experiments on kids. Maybe even Carter. And did I say “had a father” back there? Because maybe Dr. Nix isn’t as dead as we thought. And maybe all of this has something to do with the rash of missing children and dead women in the area. And who is Cain? Carter’s depraved twin brother? Or something else entirely?
We’re almost at the end of this marathon of re brews, so I’m going to keep it brief. This is De Palma through and through, so your mileage is going to vary depending on what you think of films like Dressed to Kill and Body Double. Like I said in the intro, everything you want from him in terms of directing style is on display here, and that includes his fetishes. The story, which does indeed involve the kidnapping of children for experiments, is more out there perhaps than his other plots, but as crazy as it is he does keep it all together and brings about a a tight, vintage De Palma ending.
All that’s fine, and I suppose there’s a number of folks who could have played these parts and have Raising Cain still work, but the whopper here is having Lithgow as the lead. He is phenomenal in the role, playing not only *SPOILER* multiple personalities but in fact multiple people. It’s a great showcase for what he can do, and De Palma really lets him chew into every scene. There’s an interrogation scene where he plays a seven year old boy and an old woman, and it’s just terrific. Matching him despite having the less showy role is Lolita Davidovich as his wife Jenny, caught up in the Hitchcockian mystery and desperate trying to find her daughter. She exudes hot wife/mom energy in the best way, making everything heightened and believable in a way other actresses fail.
I wish I could say the same for some of the other roles. Steven Bauer as Jack, her old flame/love interest is basically a wet fish, and most of the cops are the generic balding banter types that are purely there as dressing to move the story to its conclusion (although points to Greg Henry who I alway enjoy). But those are small complaints in a film that has so many fun turns and Hitchcock references to play with (there’s a sequence where a car is pushed into a lake that is straight out of Psycho) and in the end I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed Raising Cain.
Cinema Dual 
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