n the middle of a rainy night, a diner finishes his meal at a roadside cafe in the middle of the New Mexico desert. Another man mysteriously appears, as if from nowhere, and reveals a series of horrific drawings that send the terrified diner out into the ebbing storm. Before long, the diner has been murdered, and the reasons are unknown: Is this an isolated incident, or is he part of a larger tapestry of killings?
FBI agent Thomas Mackelway (Eckhart) is assigned to the case. Recently reassigned to New Mexico after botching the investigation of a confirmed killer, Mackelway has much to prove, and begins intrepidly following a string of murders that unfold and seem to hold some mysterious connection to himself. When one of the victims turns out to be the selfsame killer he let free just years before, the agent finds himself inexplicably connected to the pursuit of a man who is known only as "suspect zero"—a killer who has no apparent motive and demonstrates no pattern by which he can be tracked.
As Mackelway falls further and further into the emotional maelstrom of the case, his former partner, Fran Kulok (Moss), enters the fray and attempts to bring him back to the empirical world of FBI investigation. Unfortunately, Mackelway's connection to this apparently unstoppable killer cannot be severed, and it remains to be seen whether they can find a resolution that will not drive the increasingly frantic agent completely mad.
Just a shadow of Shadow
The real star of Suspect Zero is director E. Elias Merhige, who previously helmed the stranger-than-fiction behind-the-scenes Nosferatu picture Shadow of the Vampire and here has interpolated the idea of remote viewing into a police procedural and crafted one of the more intriguing suspense thrillers of recent years. Unfortunately, the director's ideas and his execution leave a pretty significant margin for misinterpretation by audiences, especially in light of other recent films that aim for a similarly metaphysical approach to serial-killer movies, with just enough success to ruin the good entries that occasionally come down the pike. What Merhige ends up with, disappointingly enough, is a movie that feels familiar but inspires genuine curiosity, thus leaving unearthed the compelling concepts that underlie the procedural aspects of the story.
Thankfully, Merhige has captivating actors onscreen to bring the film's formulaic elements to life; Aaron Eckhart's relative anonymity as an actor works in his favor as an agent who slowly begins to stand out from the indistinguishable pencil-pushers and investigators because of his potential abilities with this unexplored phenomenon, while Moss brings the right amount of sensitivity to an all-business woman who wants desperately to see Mackelway conquer his demons but can't allow herself to get in the middle of the scuffle. Ben Kingsley, who just a month ago mailed in a performance in the kid-friendly Thuderbirds, returns to the territory for which he is best known—intense, frighteningly realistic portrayals of driven men—and gives one of the best performances of his career. That he doesn't enjoy much screen time matters little; the effectiveness of his abandon as the potential killer gives the film the startling gravitas it needs and elevates the material to something far above its genre origins.
Ultimately, the film only succeeds by half, because remote viewing is an idea that is more interesting as a concept than when put into practice, and Merhige can't quite decide whether he wants to acquiesce to genre convention or abandon it completely; Suspect Zero gets points for avoiding many of the obvious trappings of suspense thrillers (fake scares, exaggerated shadows, etc.), but it fails to successfully integrate the great ideas into the passable ones and leaves the audience with less intrigue, and fewer scares, than they are no doubt seeking from supposedly scary pabulum like this.
