Last nite, I watched Felicia's Journey, which was directed by the Canadian director Atom Egoyan, who is also known for, The Sweet Hereafter. Like The Sweet Hereafter, this is a dark and somber film that explores loneliness...This film definitely leaves a mark on your brain. It also really takes you into the main character's mind and gives you a perspective of the serial killer's mind.

The story is not fast paced. Rather, it is one of those films which focuses more on the characters and the acting. It is filmed in a way that captures the surroundings and the characters expressions and feelings quite well.

Felicia (Elaine Cassidy) is an Irish girl who goes to England in order to find the boy whom she is in love with. He had promised to write her but never does. So, she travels alone to England in order to find him. It slowly becomes apparent that she is naive and unaware that the boy she is looking for never really cared about her.

While looking for him, she meets an older man (Bob Hoskins)who appears to be nice and normal on the outside.  He helps her with directions several times during her journey.  He takes his time getting her to trust him before making any move on her.  Everything seems to be pre-meditated as though he has done this before...

Then, when we are taken into his home, we get a view of the way his mind works. His house is clean and in perfect order and he appears to be a perfectionist. He makes huge fancy dinners every night, despite the fact that he lives alone. He prepares his dinner by following old videos of his mother, who was once a chef on a television cooking show...He seems obsessed with his mother in some weird and sick way...it is quite bizarre and almost dizzying to watch him...

You almost get the sense that the mother was very self absorbed, only caring how she looked on television, often making him feel humiliated if he did anything clumsy on her show...She also seemed to be overly affectionate towards him...There seems to be some sort of odd power that makes him unable to let go of his mother causing him to act in obsessive ways...

We see flashes inside his mind of all the other women he has picked up, including the conversations in his car which he has recorded on video...All have the same stories...Every woman is young, alone, sad, and in need of help...All of them confide in him, trust him, shed tears over their situation.  All of them end up wanting to eventually leave and then their faces turn to fear as they see he does not want to let them go. All of them end up dead.

In the beginning, we are introduced to this odd fanatic like bible study woman.  She approaches Felicia with the words of the Lord. It is quite eerie, the way she speaks of the lord, the words she says, the way she smiles...unreal and plastic...In the end, she reappears with her bible and strange fanatic words, which she uses on the serial killer. She has interrupted him as he is about to kill Felicia.

The ending is quite ironic, it is the words of the bible that seem to prompt the killer to feel fear causing him to stop what he is doing.  In the end, he lets the girl go and takes his own life. The words of the bible lady seem somehow interweaved into both the character of Felicia and of the serial killer.

In some odd way, religion is what seems to save and redeem both the serial killer and Felicia.  And this is the last thing that you are left with.  This film is chilling in its own kind of way and at the same time deeply thought provoking.