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the audience applauded

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

"Raising Cain" is often cited as minor DePalma but surely even minor DePalma is often so much better than the best of many other minor directors and even minor DePalma can be a lot of fun. His critics call him a plagarist and his many homages to Hitchcock, (some call them rip-offs but I don't), could, in other hands, become tiresome but Mr DePalma elevates them to the level of art. The plots may often be silly and he doesn't always bring out the best in his actors but the set pieces are gloroious if sometimes a little too obvious.Here "Psycho" gets the full-on treatment right down to the car in the swamp and the psychiatrist's explanation and, as in "Vertigo", he gives us the big reveal quite early on. But it's those set-pieces, in this case a slo-mo climax during a thunderstorm, that carry the picture and, of course, there's always John Lithgow pulling out all the stops and then some as a distinct first cousin of Norman Bates.

After watching Carlito's Way, and positively falling in love with the film, I did what I typically tend to do, and begin seeking out more works from the director. I was a mixed bag in regards to Brian De Palma before Carlito's Way, I had seen Carrie, Scarface, and The Untouchables. I nearly despise Scarface, and thought Carrie was "alright" but Carlito's Way enticed me to see more of his work. De Palma made Raising Cain in 1992, just one year before Carlito's Way. Other than knowing of the director's involvement, you could not have convinced me that these films were by the same person. As different in tone as they are in storyline, Raising Cain follows a child psychologist destined to finish the work of his father, leading a double life unbeknownst to his wife. Coming off a bit like a made-for-TV movie, Raising Cain was a bizarre journey into the psyche of someone with Dissociative identity disorder. Child psychologist Dr. Carter Nix (John Lithgow) spends a lot of time with his daughter, almost to an obsessive degree. This arrangement works well for his busy oncologist wife, Jenny (Lolita Davidovich). Although, Jenny sometimes feels uncomfortable by the amount of time Carter spends with their daughter, and his level of involvement in her daily life, Jenny's friends keep telling her hos much they wish their husbands were even a bit like Carter, putting her mind temporarily at ease. Just as her fears begin to resurface again, she rekindles an old romance with a man she met at the hospital years before.Jenny being preoccupied with her old flame puts her motherly duties aside and is more than willing to allow Carter the amount of time he has become used to having with their daughter. What Jenny doesn't know, is that Carter leads a whole other life that she knows nothing about wherein he kidnaps children to perform experiments on them with his father who is believed to be dead. After finding out about his wife's affair, Carter summons his brother "Cain" to kill his wife and incriminate her lover. When Jenny survives and begins to find out just what her husband is up to, she begins a chase with the police to find her daughter before Carter can replicate his deranged father's experiments. There is a lot to unpack in Raising Cain, as there often is in a film dealing with Dissociative identity disorder. De Palma was certainly at what seems to be his most unhinged in Raising Cain, not afraid to create a story line difficult to follow fraught with confusion and unsettling imagery. Raising Cain suffers a bit from its zany approach. Not that a film needs a strict genre, but the film definitely couldn't decide what it wanted to be. In parts horror, other parts suspense, and other parts psychological thriller; Raising Cain attempts to fulfill any genre it can, succeeding nowhere. John Lithgow seems grossly miscast, which is unfortunate because, in one way or another, his is the face the audience sees on screen the most. The film did have an engaging sound design, preventing one from turning the film off before it ends. The sound is actually the most engaging aspect of the film, which shouldn't be the case in a film as all over the place as this one. I did enjoy the same wonderful low angle shots so prevalent in Carlito's Way, so that was a plus. Ultimately, Raising Cain never picks a lane, preventing it from speeding away effectively in any of them, reminiscent of a Lifetime movie that only putters once it gets in the air.

The psychologist Dr. Carter Nix (John Lithgow) leaves a park with his little daughter Amy and takes a ride with the mother of another child. He tries to convince her to leave her son travel to Norway for an experiment with his father but she does not accept. Dr. Nix uses chloroform to take her boy and leaves the unconscious woman in the trunk of her car with his brother Cain to get rid of her. His wife Dr. Jenny Nix (Lolita Davidovich) is worried about his obsession for Amy. When Jenny meets her former lover Jack (Steven Bauer) in a store, she has a love affair with him and plans to leave her husband. However Carter discovers their love affair and he kills a babysitter and leaves clues incriminating Jack. Then he suffocates Jenny with a pillow, puts her body into her car and submerges it in a swamp. Carter goes to the police department claiming that his wife and his daughter are missing. He also tells that he had seen a stranger in the park. Lt. Terri (Gregg Henry) and Sgt. Cally (Tom Bower) that are in charge of the investigation asks Carter to do a sketch of the suspect. However a veteran detective recalls the case of Carter's father and he summons Dr. Waldheim (Frances Sternhagen) that discloses how deranged his father was. Out of the blue, Jenny returns and now the police needs to find where the kidnapped children are."Raising Cain" is a deceptive thriller by Brian De Palma, with a flawed, conventional, predictable and poorly story. The plot is unbelievable, commercial and silly, with the strange situations easily resolved. How could Jenny escape from a car submerged in a swamp? Her infidelity that triggers completely madness in Carter becomes "politically correct". Jack saving Amy with the spear coming toward him is ridiculous. The conclusion might be a joke or a tribute to "Dressed to Kill". My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Síndrome de Caim" ("Cain Sindrome")

Carter Nix seems to be a devoted husband and father, but behind this facade lurks a shady past and some decidedly odd relations. When Carter's twisted brother Cain shows up and some local children go missing, can the police figure out what's going on in time ?Brian DePalma's best films are just so deliciously twisted, and in my view this is one of his very best. There are at least five fantastic aaaaahhhhh moments in it; the comatose wife awaking from her slumber at the wrong moment, Carter abruptly smothering Jenny with the pillow, the shocking twist on the old car-in-the-swamp Psycho moment, Jenny's sudden appearance on the baby monitor, Margot headbutting Dr Waldheim. All of these are beautifully, lovingly stylised, but the whole movie is just full of fantastic sequences, culminating in the terrific showdown at the motel. It also has a completely outstanding four-minute shot in the middle walking through the cop-shop, where Sternhagen ploughs through a ton of back-story, hits about a thousand marks (including some intentionally wrong ones) and emotes like there's no tomorrow. If ever you hear some phony-baloney actor type spouting off about have to struggle to find their character, show them this scene - Sternhagen is wild, funny, gripping, irascible, scared, intriguing and intense, all at the same time. Better yet, Lithgow is equally sensational, playing five characters with terrific abandon, weedy one moment, terrifying the next. Okay, so DePalma may have trodden this ground before (Sisters, Dressed To Kill, Body Double), but nobody does these crazy, sexy, twisty-turny thrillers as well as he does, and the cinematic power of these incredible set-pieces is just astonishing. Here's a movie where not a moment is wasted, where every shot is both artfully composed and intrinsically important, where every nuance the actors can provide contributes to the mood and the shocks. It's simply fantastic from start to finish. With a terrific score by Pino Donaggio (the music makes me scream every time) and fabulous photography throughout from Stephen H. Burum, this is a masterclass is technical filmmaking. Produce by Gale Anne Hurd (of Terminator fame) and brilliantly written and directed by DePalma, this is a great, gleeful, creepy, exciting, shocking, fantastically well-executed thriller.