Stay (15)

Stay: not so much a title as a plea to the audience not to walk out of this unoriginal, pretentious psycho-thriller. It opens with a car somersaulting along the Brooklyn Bridge. The only survivor, Ryan Gosling, is referred to a psychiatrist, Ewan McGregor, and tells him that he's planning to kill himself. This is a topic in which McGregor has more than a professional interest, as his artist girlfriend, Naomi Watts, has scars on her wrists from her own suicide attempt.

It might be intriguing if the director didn't make it so clear that everything is happening in some sort of dream world. But as events repeat themselves, and people morph into one another, and ominous symbols keep popping up, it's hard to invest any emotion in characters who may not exist, even within the reality of the film.

It all gets more and more befuddling until you're just sitting and waiting for the brilliantly clever explanation at the end. There isn't one.