'The Magus' meets 'Twelve Monkeys' meets 'Peeping Tom' meets 'No Such Thing.'<br /><br />Give this film a chance. Sure it is clumsily produced, numbly acted and ineptly directed. Most films are, but the writer is working on something interesting here. What 'the Cube' was to staging, this is to plot twists. And unlike 'Memento' or 'Mulholland Drive,' there is no single 'explanation.'<br /><br />Start with this thought: someone in the play wrote the play, but to everyone else, the pages are blank. Whose perspective are we following?<br /><br />The simple answer is that some mysterious Dr. Ek is manipulating the situation with drugs and actors. But wait! The actors (and Ek and house) are imaginary because someone is manipulating the whole thing directly with noodles into the brain. But if there is manipulation or noodling, it is to get the book (the script) which has mystical powers of creation. But wait! If the book has such powers, probably the whole thing is a matter of psychic hallucination resulting from a ritual interaction with the book. In this case, the solution is simple.<br /><br />But wait! The book comes with the house, the house forcing Trevor to write the book, then forming the basis of nearly all the vision and forcing him to write constantly to populate it. This is one of the two novel ideas: that the house is one of the possible powers behind the thing. Orson Welles worked with this. A few haunted house films. 'Belly of an Architect,' for instance. Few others, but highly intellectual.<br /><br />The other clever idea is that several forces are at war to control and tell us the story. Trevor, Ek, the book, the house. No one in particular wins and the movie you see depends a lot on how you see the world. '2001' used this trick (HAL, the humans, and the aliens) but most famously in popular film : 'Children of Paradise.' <br /><br />This is one of the few films I know which would have been improved with less nudity. Its just too clunky and unnatural and it distracts from the cleverness. But about that nudity: the second time I saw this was from a DVD rented from Blockbuster. As with many direct-to-video projects, Blockbuster cuts out some nudity in versions manufactured specifically for them. Still pretty shocking in one spot though.<br /><br />This film follows 'Blair Witch 2' in sophistication of nested and warring narratives and makes me impressed by the ability of kids today to manage these abstract notions.<br /><br />Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.