Starring the late, great Robin Williams in possibly his finest ever dramatic performance, One Hour Photo is a study of obsession, not with an individual, but with a family, and the life that they represent together. Sy Parrish is a photo tech at the one hour photo store of the title: a lonely man, fantasising about being a part of one of the families that he regularly develops photographs for, the Yorkins. A survivor of child abuse, Sys been taking his own copies of their family photos for years, and pasting them into a shrine on his wall. When Sy finds out that Will Yorkin has been having an affair and so ruining the perfect family picture that Sys been so obsessed with hes enraged and determines to punish him Part of what makes this film so sinister in places is that Sys fixation on the Yorkins and the idyllic life that they appear to lead via their family snaps is one we recognise from another sub genre of the thriller the serial killer movie (it actually is the plot of Manhunter, aka Red Dragon). One Hour Photo could easily be one of those kind of films, and for the majority of the film it looks like its going to be, especially when a knife wielding Sy surprises Yorkin and his mistress in their hotel room and forces them to pose in provocative poses while he takes pictures. Hes a shy, socially inept loner with a background of abuse in a nothing job. Thats classic serial killer breeding material. Thankfully Sys different. As the police interrogate him at the end of the film, we find that the pictures he seemed to take in the hotel room are instead of furniture and objects from around the house, echoing his statement of earlier in the film that adults take pictures of things happening, and children just take pictures of ordinary things around the house. Sys just a child at heart, a case of arrested development.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
