Brian De Palma. Now, I know I also gave Phantom of the Paradise low marks, but that was still full of life and paunch and suffered not from bloatedness and laziness but instead from overambitious nonsense and "too-much-itis". But compared to Raising Cain... woo, lemme just say this movie was stupid and terrible.
Raising Cain is sort of a dream team also. You got John Lithgow as the main character, De Palma in the director chair, it's a psychological thriller, same music guy De Palma always works with, and its slow burn style. Except, its also not, because like 10 minutes into the movie we're given too much information and there are spoilers present, so I might as well put them in the synopsis too. Lithgow is early on shows to be crazy, with multiple personalities at least. So, when he then later...has them again...it's not surprising, you dig? And it's not well acted or written either, as a surprise for these guys who normally are quite good.
Lithgow is portrayed as having mainly his split personality Cain. Cain gets unleashed whenever Lithgow is turned on I think, something like that, and he was the result of Lithgow having his father do experiments on him. Lithgow's main persona is boring numbskulled Doctor Carter, and his wife has an affair with some guy, so Cain comes out and kills her. Lithgow's wife is played by Lolita Davidovich, and damn if her character had bad dialogue and was ALSO not well acted. I am unfamiliar with her, but if I just saw this, I would think she was not a successful actress at all.
Raising Cain was a modest success, and De Palma's career wasn't stunted by it, and many of his most known works was still to come including Mission Impossible. So I guess this was just a weird bump in the road for him. And it's not completely awful... but it's close.
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