***/****
starring Raymond J. Barry, Dylan Haggerty, Jimmy Burke, Renee Faia
written and directed by Neil Burger
by Walter Chaw One of the truest children of The Blair Witch Project, Neil Burger's Interview with the Assassin is a mockumentary shot on digital video that mixes an urban myth and our current fascination (and ease) with digital imaging technologies. Voyeurism is touched upon, as are its attached issues of privacy and the loss thereof in our information dystopia; that the picture manages to juggle its points of view while remaining faithful to its one-camera pony is testament to the cleverness of Burger's debut screenplay and direction. (Its faithfulness in this arena also separates it from the inferior The Last Broadcast.) Interview with the Assassin, rather than dealing with an imaginary beastie, deals with the phantom second-gunman on the grassy knoll–played by veteran character actor Raymond J. Barry–as he's interviewed by a faux-documentarian played by Dylan Haggerty. Interview with the Assassin, then, also tackles the fear of suburban monsters, rednecks, and middle-class mid-life malaise that leads spoonfed milquetoasts to believe that they, too, can be filmmakers. At its heart–again like Blair Witch Project–a cautionary tale about the accumulation of knowledge and the foolhardiness and prejudices of a certain class, Interview with the Assassin impresses most with a super-creepy home-invasion sequence and Berry's fabulous, seething performance.
