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Effects of the dominant in Secret Window.

This article seeks to identify and examine “problematic” aesthetic strategies in David Koepp’s Secret Window (2004). Arguing that the film fits into a specific “puzzle film” category favouring self-deceiving protagonists and surprise twists; the paper seeks to account for the negative critical reaction aroused by the film’s denouement. Most centrally, I invoke the Russian Formalist concept of the “dominant” in order to suggest how Secret Window subordinates textual elements to the film’s narrative revelation. It is this prioritising of the main plot twist that accounts for many of the film’s dramaturgically contentious tactics. The article demonstrates the means by which Secret Window cuts against the grain of Hollywood storytelling norms; it suggests that the film manipulates character engagement in a way that exceeds the puzzle film’s traditional reshuffling of sympathies; and it indicates how the film deploys generic convention and allusion to engender a highly self-conscious and repressive narration. These arguments aim to show that the film displays bold and sophisticated aesthetic strategies. More broadly, the article argues that by analysing problematic examples of a film genre, we can usefully disclose the aesthetic principles underpinning the genre’s more successful films. The essay locates its theoretical underpinnings in Russian Formalist criticism, and intersects with more recent trends in film theory such as character engagement and cognitive film theory. Apart from its close formalist analysis of Secret Window, this article sketches a broad historical context for the film, situating it in the context of other American and trends in world cinema that experiment with bold narrative organisation.