Throwback Thursday: Wicked (1998)

“Dad, you love me, don’t you?”

Tonight we’re taking a trip all the way back to 1998 when Julia Stiles was still a relatively unknown actress, a mere year before her breakout role in 10 Things I Hate About You and three years before her starring role in Save The Last Dance. Yep, tonight we’re visiting with a relatively unknown gem called Wicked, not to be confused with the recent musical and Disney films which are VERY different from this particular flick. Also, while Wicked premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, it wasn’t accessible to general audiences until its home video release in 2001.

In the film Stiles portrays Ellie, a fourteen-year-old girl who has a very unhealthy relationship with her father. When her mother is brutally murdered in their home, Ellie amps up her affection for her father, going so far as to dress in her mother’s sexy clothing and applying a lot of makeup to make herself more appealing to her father. She also prepares meals and keeps her little sister, Inger, in line with brutal discipline. Her father soon develops a relationship with the family’s former housekeeper, Lena, and when their marriage is announced, Ellie spirals out of control, forming an unlikely bond with her neighbor, Lawson, who also happened to be her mother’s lover behind her father’s back. A persistent detective attempts to hunt down the murderer of Ellie’s mother, but as he gets closer to the truth, things get even more insane. Who killed Ellie’s mom? Why did they kill her? Will anyone else die? Find out in the surprisingly fun and creepy Wicked.

This film features an amazing cast and the story itself makes you uncomfortable and queasy. Julia Stiles outdoes herself as Ellie, who becomes increasingly vicious as the story rolls along. Her father, portrayed by William R. Moses, is just as creepy and unlikable as you’d expect him to be and is quite hard to feel any emotions for in the film. Vanessa Zima portrays young Inger with sugary sweetness at first, but even her character takes a dark turn in the movie. The rest of the cast includes Michael Parks as Detective Boland, Linda Hart as Ms. Potter, and Chelsea Field in a brief role as Ellie’s much despised mother, Karen. Of special note is the performance of Patrick Muldoon as Lawson Smith, Karen’s dimwitted lover and the eventual cohort of Ellie.

I highly recommend this film. The cast do a wonderful job of making you feel sick, creeped out, and generally not willing to like any of them. The story moves along at a nice pace and is definitely worth a look. It’s available currently on a number of streaming services including Amazon Prime and Plex.

Thanks for checking out my look back at a truly creepy gem of a film.