No secrets here

Secret Window (12A)

Running time: 96min
***

A remote log cabin in the woods, a blocked writer, a murderously obsessive reader, a snowbound motel and a dead dog - based on one of Stephen King's Four Past Midnight stories, Secret Windowhas all the horror maestro's familiar clawmarks.

Yet, despite a terrific cast and director David (Panic Room) Koepp a-twiddling our suspense knobs, this infuriatingly obvious twist-in-the-tale thriller never really leaps off the page.

Dorito-dependent serial-napper Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp) is cushioning the pain of a messy divorce and constant deadlines by crashing on the sofa. But when a Mississippi psycho in a scary black hat (John Turturro) doorsteps him with accusations of 'stealing ma story', Mort must finally confront reality.

This is a slick, well-paced production and Depp is superbly unnerving as twitchy-haired Mort - as if he's still coming down from the panto excesses of Pirates Of The Caribbean - but it's nothing to write home about. In fact, ironically for a thriller about plagiarism, it reads like an inferior merging of The Shining and Misery, with 'been there, done that, buried the body' scribbled all over it.