Review #278: Grand Piano (2013)

Gabe’s Supplemental Horror Review #1 - Grand Piano (2013)

Well, I’ve run out of past-years' reviews to post and I’ve got a few days left before October starts, so here’s a review for a movie I watched recently!

I should probably fess up right here at the start by saying that I don’t think this movie is really meant to be horror (IMDB has it listed as Drama/Music/Mystery; I didn’t even know “Music” was a movie genre but there it is), but I definitely felt similar vibes throughout the film to many horror films I’ve seen in the past. Also, this is my blog, go start your own if this bothers you. (And I don’t mean that as a taunt or challenge: please start your own blog, and send me the link! I would love to read your reviews!)

Grand Piano follows Elijah Wood as Tom Failznick Selznick, a prodigious pianist who has left the public eye after going viral several years prior for screwing up the final segment of La Cinquette, a nearly-impossible music piece that his mentor, now deceased, adored. He has returned to the stage to perform once more, and is feeling incredibly nervous and apprehensive due to the high pressures (real and perceived) and everyone's insistence on bringing up his past failure. When he takes a seat to begin his performance, however, he realizes that someone has left a message on his sheet music, with a threat- perform La Cinquette perfectly, or you and your wife will be killed. (A red sniper dot that apparently nobody else can see punctuates this threat, as well as a perfectly-silent rifle round fired into the floor of the stage.)

For the rest of the film, Selznick proceeds to play the entire concert perfectly while also trying to get help (by taking his phone out of his pocket and texting an acquaintance whenever his left hand isn’t busy on the piano, by abruptly running backstage and looking for solutions whenever he’s not needed to accompany the orchestra, etc.). I’m realizing now that in text this doesn’t sound especially tense but I assure you, during the film I was on the edge of my seat and loved watching Elijah Wood’s performance of rebelling against this unseen assassin and complying with their demands only as far as he needs to while he struggles to come up with a solution. (It’s also impressive that quite a bit of Selznick’s piano playing was actually performed by Elijah Wood; not all of it, but even being able to do some of it while delivering lines is a huge task.)

Without giving any spoilers, I’ll say that there’s a couple things about the villain’s plot that struck me as kind of… meh. The actual motivation for getting Selznick to perform La Cinquette was so silly that when it was revealed I literally thought it was a joke (also how it resolves at the very very end had me calling Mega Shenanigans), and the assassin’s awareness seemed to fluctuate between being borderline premonitory (once or twice he seems to know things before they even happen) and completely clueless (he doesn’t notice Selznick awkwardly shaking his phone out in the open or dropping it on the floor). Also, some of the choreography for the climactic fight at the end was a bit bizarre and the ending in general just felt a bit too convenient for my tastes. (And this isn’t really a criticism of the movie, rather a criticism of the runtime- of this movie’s 90 minutes, 12 of those minutes are credits! I can’t help but feel like someone needed to pad it out to meet some length requirement.)

But overall I thought this was a very good movie, with a great plot and amazing performances all around. Even if it isn’t technically horror I would recommend it right up alongside many of the other suspenseful greats.

Overall Rating: 9/10 Terrible Radio Interviews

Return to the Stage (in More Ways than One): This movie was Alex Winter’s first non-cameo film acting role in 20 years!