Stay was a film that kind of snuck up on us after being shelved for over a year. Having seen it, it's not hard to understand why a film like this perplexed the studio and probably sent test audiences to their car scratching their collective heads. First of all the film has many things to recommend it, it was helmed by one of the most promising directors in Hollywood. Marc Forster is the man who gave us both Finding Neverland and Monster's Ball - two of the most brilliant films in the last three or four years. Plus the cast is first rate, starring Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Bob Hoskins, Jeanine Garofalo, along with perhaps the most interesting young actor to come along in some time - Ryan Gosling. All this combined with a well put together trailer that suggested that the movie had supernatural, even Biblical overtones, had me totally enthralled.

As it turns out, the film is a somewhat disappointing mind-phuk that, for the most part, fails to deliver the goods. The trailer shows us a beleaguered and overwrought Gosling who begins to see people who have died. My take on this was that the film was going to explore the predictions in the book of Revelations wherein the last days the dead will walk the earth, a suspicion that the film's title would seem to support. As for what the movie is really about, it's almost impossible for me to tell you without giving everything away. At the very least I will say that nothing in this film is as it seems and the ending is a direct rip-off of Jacob's Ladder, with shades of Donnie Darko as well - both of which are far superior films.

Stay features Ewan McGregor as a psychiatrist who right away begins to question his own sanity when a new patient Henry Letham (Gosling) shows up claiming that he's going to kill himself in three days - Saturday night at the stroke of midnight. McGregor's had his share of dealing with the suicidal (his fiancee Naomi Watts attempted it just a few months prior) but there's something about Henry that is a little more disturbing than your garden variety window jumpers. Number one, he can predict the future, plus he seems to have vague connections to everyone in McGregor's life.

For one thing he was referred to him by a colleague (Jeanine Garafalo) who has recently fallen on difficult times. She is depressed, sits around her house, refusing to do anything but drink and take pills - is a suicide risk herself and obviously hasn't bothered to bathe for weeks. All of which is in some way tied to this Henry Letham character. Things become increasingly bizarre as Henry stumbles into Ewan's office while he's playing chess with a blind friend and immediately starts freaking out claiming that the blind man is in fact his dead father. Soon McGregor's world is turned upside down as he begins to investigate the claims of this odd patient, even going so far as to visit his parents home and talking to his mother. The mother is also supposedly dead (Henry claims to have killed both of his parents) but when he arrives at the home he finds the mother very much alive along with a large menacing dog named Olive who doesn't cotton to McGregor whatsoever.

Even more perplexing is the strange woman is convinced that McGregor is her son and when he protests, she becomes angry, begins to bleed profusely from her head all the while spouting recriminations of the "don't you think I'd recognize my own son?" sort - and then the dog attacks him - viciously biting the confused psychiatrists arm. Meanwhile a few of McGregor's law-enforcement friends get wind of his wild claims - none of which are grounded in any kind of reality and start to become concerned about their buddy the shrink. In order to help him they begin to investigate this Henry Letham and all they can find is an empty apartment that's walls are completely covered by the words "forgive me" written in microscopic precision. Finally one of his cop friends informs him that the woman he had just met with and the dog who attacked him had been dead for some time.

Meanwhile we the audience are trying to make heads or tails out of any of this, but as it turns out there's really no sense to be made. At times the film makers imbue Henry with messianic traits (he heals the eyes of his blind father and is able to predict the future to the point that he can recite everything McGregor says in unison with him. During his journey of discovery, McGregor does find out from a waitress/actress/girlfriend (who Henry has purchased an engagement ring for) that Henry's hero is an obscure artist who burned all of his work before any of it could be seen and shoots himself at midnight on the Brooklyn Bridge. With time running out and Saturday midnight fast approaching, McGregor makes a nightmarish dash to the bridge in hopes of intercepting Henry before he can follow through and it is here where we learn exactly what has happened and what is going on. Does it work? Not very well, nor does it justify the last 90 minutes of the film. The ending does lend itself to plenty of speculation as you watch the credits roll , and I'll admit I would like to see it again knowing how it ends, in case I missed something during the film that would make the ending a little stronger - but the bottom line is it really doesn't cut it. Again too much of a rip-off of Jacob's Ladder. Still the film maintains an interesting and creepy tone throughout and all of the performances by these terrific actors are solid - which is enough for me to give Stay a