DJ Caruso directed one of the all-time great bad movie sequences in Taking Lives. At the end of the film FBI profiler Angeline Jolie gets away from lover/serial killer Ethan Hawke after he dies in a car crash. She moves away to the country where she’s pregnant with his child – like super pregnant, and buying pregnancy stuff at the store and everything. It turns out that Hawke is not dead and he shows up at her house, stabs her in the distended belly and… it was a fake belly! She faked seven months of pregnancy to get Hawke out of hiding! Mind bogglingly bad stuff.
Caruso sort of came back with Disturbia, and enjoyable teen take on Rear Window, but really blew it with Eagle Eye, one of the worst films of the 2000s – which is saying something, as Taking Lives is also one of the worst films of the decade. To have two movies on that list is an achievement of some sort.
Caruso’s signed on to a new one, and now the waiting begins to see if he can start off this decade with a new worst-ever or deliver one of his actually good movies. He’s going to direct I Am Number Four, an adaptation of the upcoming teen scifi book from James Frey (yes, the guy who lied about his memoirs). The book is about an alien whose planet is destroyed by other evil aliens, and who comes to Earth to hide out in a local high school. Which is what I would do. Have you seen how high school girls dress these days? And have you heard about Lipstick Parties? Jesus!
Caruso obviously has a strong relationship with Shia LaBeouf – the two were also going to make Y The Last Man together for a while, so I guess it’s possible that Shia could take the lead. But would Shia be interested in still playing high school kids at this stage of his career?
Anyway, the script is by Al Gough and Miles Millar, the Smallville guys, and it’s being produced by Mr. Michael Bay. The book – first of six – is published this fall.