Sometimes, getting stuck into the wrong genre can kill a film. If you watch this one expecting to see a horror flick, you will be so disappointed by the end that you will want your 90 minutes back.First, the bad. In the early parts of the movie, everyone (including the director who should know better) say their lines as if they are on a stage rather than inside your television. Everyone, that is, except for the delightful girl playing the violin. I just love her. I suspect that the "we are taking part in a stage play" acting/cinematography was deliberate, since you could make an intellectual argument that it feeds into the theme of empty people trying to fill their lives with art. However, intellectual concepts about art do not always make good art. I recommend that anyone making a movie pay careful attention in the editing room. If it does not look good there, it won't look good in the finished project, no matter how brilliant the director/star's mental footnotes.Now, onto the fun parts. If you do not get to see Angel from Buffy dressed in women's underwear, wrapped in Christmas lights, strapped to a chair being tormented by Alan Cummings, you have missed one of life's joys---much like Honey Badger as in "Honey Badger don't give a s**t." Sometimes, poor taste is what we need to slap us awake and make us pay attention. This scene is character John Vandermark's masterpiece. It is low brow, silly, horrifying, ohmygodIcantbelievehedidthat art, but it is art. And John is rewarded with fame, riches and the undivided attention of the object of his love returned from the grave as a ghost. Too bad he is now a hollow shell of a man (literally) by movie's end.Best lines in the movie. Girl playing violin asks what that smell is. John replies that it is "passion". She counters that it's not, it smells like her dead hamster.John Waters understands that sometimes art smells like a dead hamster.

Since I'm on this Alan Cumming obsession, I've decided to watch as many films with him in it as I can. I found this one called "Suffering Man's Charity" or… "Ghost Writer". And I noticed that it had gotten quite a few bad reviews. I was a bit surprised by this. And I was even more surprised when I had finished the entire movie. I found this film to be quite phenomenal. It was dark, twisted, and it really had very interesting, and in-depth characters. Alan Cumming's performance was truly brilliant. I hadn't really seen him portray that sort of role before, and it was honestly amazing to see. He was vulnerable, and innocent in a way. But then with a blink of an eye, his personality was completely different. He could switch his emotions with such intensity, and it was believable. To actually be able to get into the mindset of that character, it must've been truly difficult. I take my non-existent hat off to Mr. Alan Cumming. The story of this film was well thought out, and it was really actually quite simple. But the simplicity, mixed with the performance of the actors, it really brought this movie to life in the darkest of ways. This film does not deserve the bad reviews it had gotten. I really do recommend this film.

...that seems more of a vanity project for director/star, Alan "X2" Cumming than anything else, and what a vanity project it is, or isn't, depending on your perspective. The script is from a noob screenwriter, and it's a step above many, though not nearly as clever as it might otherwise wish. It takes way too long to get down to business (Syd Field would not be pleased), and has a tendency to spoil its own mysteries. In a nutshell, Cumming overacts a martinet of a private music teacher with a weakness for "nurturing" various young talents, in this case a ladies man of a writer who ends up grifting him to the point of histrionic vengeance. It's not a pretty sight (in fact, it's laden with homosexual clichés, beginning with their love of opera, and not yet ending with a macho man in bra and panties), and does nothing to advance the situation or audience appreciation of its protagonist or anyone else within earshot. As mentioned, the acting (and this is mostly all Cumming's baby) verges on hysterically overdone (or in the case of the antagonist (David "Angel" Boreanaz), crushingly underplayed to the point of apparent boredom), although (for the most part) the various production elements are fairly well done, given the relative low budget. Minimal appearances by the likes of Henry "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" Thomas, Carrie "Star Wars" Fisher, Anne "Psycho" Heche (looking exceedingly pinched and drawn), and Karen "Easy Rider" Black (who utterly steals her scene as a foul-mouthed slut) cannot rescue this potboiler no matter the best of intentions.Strictly for Cumming fans, and even they will be, at best, bemused.

I did not enjoy this film, it seemed like it was sewn together and totally taken over by Cumming. This actor I feel is completely over-rated in my opinion so to see him acting in a film he had also directed was a bit much as it was all "Me, me, me!" I know the whole plot centres around his character, but there was no depth to it and it fell flat.A gay music teacher (Cummings) who picks up hustlers on a regular basis and gives them free bed and board and the use of his whole home and fixtures, finds out this young attractive man, whom he likens to "Warren Beatty in Splendour in the Grass," (David Boreanaz)has been hustling him and goes completely over the top. The acting is really terrible from Cummings and his accent sounded like it was based on watching Dustin Hoffman films.The plot was very sketchy and I watched it thinking it was going to end, but it didn't, it seemed to rattle on forever, even though it is a relatively short film. I would not call this comedy, nor would I call it horror, more like "Sufference" as in that's what most people are enduring while watching this piece of tripe.To me, Boreanaz in women's underwear and tied to a chair was someone's fantasy, director maybe? It had no point whatsoever. I know there are a lot of David Boreanaz fans out there, but please avoid this film like the plague, it is best forgotten, even if you do get to see his bottom a couple of times.