Secret Window

Secret Window (2004)

26 corrected entries

(14 votes)

Corrected entry: When Mort throws the ashtray into the wall the hole looks a lot like a broken heart, but when we see the hole again it's more rectangular.

Correction: When we first see the hole, it is rectangular in shape, just like we see later when Amy sees the hole. The heart shape (possible foreshadowing) only occurs after the wall starts to crack. This cracking though is just Mort's hallucination, so the hole reverts back to the rectangle shape.

Bishop73

Corrected entry: The status bar of the MS Word document which can be seen on Mort Rainey's laptop is changing. Shortly before John Shooter arrives for the first time, the status-bar reads "Four days.", in the next scene at the laptop it reads "I have to talk to you". The rest of the document is exactly the same, even the cursor position is unchanged.

Correction: The first status bar title "Four days" is an automatic "saved" file name (based on the first words of the document. When we next see him, he's been laboring over the paragraph for some time. The change in the title of the document on the status bar just reflects that Mort saved it at some point between first working on it and when we next see him.

MovieFan612

Corrected entry: In the scene where Amy's boyfriend is at the gas station with the divorce papers, and is talking with Mort, the gas prices on the two signs read $1.55 and $1.73, but in another shot $1.73 changes to $1.61.

Correction: This is not a mistake. The $1.61 is for a mid grade of gas and the word "plus" is written on the pump under the price. The other prices are for regular and super and those words are on the pumps under the prices to. The words are hard to spot, but they are there.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Amy is trying to escape from Mort in her car, we see that the SAAB 9-3 has a manual gearbox. This would mean that after she is pulled out of the car by Mort, the car would immediately stall because her foot is not pressing the clutch pedal after she put it in reverse. The car does not stall and it keeps going in reverse until it smashes against a tree.

Correction: As you stated, she had already put the car in reverse. Reverse is just a gear - once the car is in that gear, the clutch does not need to be further engaged to keep it in gear. It would be valid to say that the car should not go very fast in reverse since Amy's foot isn't on the gas pedal - and in fact, that's pretty much what happens.

Corrected entry: While Mort is watching his wife and her boyfriend through the rear view mirror, you can see the words "objects in mirror are closer than they appear." This warning is only placed on the passenger side mirror, however it is on the driver side mirror in this scene. Though this may be a deliberate allusion or clue to the ending of the film, it is still a reality based mistake.

Correction: I had a Chrysler PT Cruiser, on which the text 'objects in mirror' etc. appeared also on the driver side mirror. So this might not be a mistake. Although the law requires the text to be placed only on the passenger side, some manufacturers put it on both sides.

Corrected entry: When Mort gets home and the investigator in the black Lincoln is sitting in his car, the first shot of Mort's Jeep has no New York inspection sticker or registration sticker on the front lower driver side windshield, but in the next shot of Mort in his Jeep, the stickers are there.

Correction: The stickers are there, just out of frame.

Corrected entry: There is a problem with Mort getting away with the murders. The first few sentences of Mort's book "Secret Window" tell you that the plot of the book was a man was going to kill his wife and bury her in the garden. Then, after Mort complains to the cops about how someone is accusing him of stealing the idea for "Secret Window", his wife is killed. The cop at the end even mentions how he suspects/knows Mort did it. Reading the first few sentences of "Secret Window" would be plenty to get a warrant to search the obviously recently dug up garden.

Correction: There's still no real proof a crime was committed - only that two people are missing. Even though the sheriff suspects Mort murdered them, there is only speculation, coincidence, and circumstantial evidence - not enough for judge to issue a search warrant. However, it is implied that Mort will eventually be caught. (At the end on the DVD you see the bodies buried under the garden, so they have not been found.).

Corrected entry: The first time we see the screwdriver (buried in Tom's head) it is buried up to the hilt, but the second time we see it (when Amy looks at it on the counter top) the 'red stuff', actually blood, is only halfway up the metal part.

Correction: Mort has more than one screwdriver. The one Amy sees inside the house is the one he used on the dog earlier on.

Twotall

Corrected entry: The flashback scene Mort storms in on Amy and her lover Ted, director David Koepp actually left Maria Bello (Amy) and Timothy Hutton (Ted) in that "room" so long they actually fell asleep. And when Mort storms in, they actually got frightened. It was intentional.

Correction: According to the DVD commentary, the director left them in the room by themselves for about 15 or 20 minutes. They didn't know when Mort was going to come in. It was completely dark in the room and the director had it rigged so that when Mort opened the door, loud music from really large speakers and bright lights came on. This is why they're startled.

Corrected entry: As Mort is preparing to pull the screwdriver out of dead Tom Greenleaf, Tom's right eye develops a nasty tic.

Phoenix

Correction: If you watch the featurette entitled "Secrets Revealed" in the DVD version of Secret Window, the director tells us that the "dead" body of Tom Greenleaf is actually made out of plastic. That "nasty tic" must have been a figment of your imagination considering that plastic heads don't develop nasty tics.

Corrected entry: When Mort picks up his mail the girl working there says to him, "That's good because I saw what you did." Then she quickly corrects herself. If she really did see Mort do something then why didn't she go to the police? Granted, she might be afraid that Mort might go after her but still, she could have told the police and Mort would be behind bars.

Correction: She never really said that, it was just his paranoia.

Corrected entry: The setup that Mort has to wait for the magazine to appear in order to prove to "Shooter" that he really did write the story, has several holes. 1)Most obviously, we see that Mort has several copies of all of his books at the country house. A quick look at the first page of the relevant book would have shown which magazine or outlet originally published the story, as is required by copyright law. So all Mort would've had to do is open that page and show "Shooter" something that would have read "This story originally appeared in Ellery Queen, such and such year, etc etc." 2) Barring that, all it would've taken is a quick phone call to the magazine itself and they could've over nighted a copy of that story. Even if we accept what we later find out about Mort and Shooter, there are still way too many unexplored options to make this plausible.

Correction: Mort doesn't pursue these avenues because he subconsciously doesn't want to solve the mystery. He has created for himself a situation with no resolution other than the one his subconscious has already chosen. He will pursue that end and ignore all others.

Phoenix

Corrected entry: When Mort and Shooter are outside and aren't in a fight after his dog was killed, you will see on Morts' glasses a reflection of bright camera lights.

Correction: That scene took place at night near Mort's porch. The lights reflected in his glasses could have very well been lights on his porch, as there are some there.

Corrected entry: Mort wakes up late and goes to meet Ken at the diner. He asks the lady at the counter if she saw Ken, she says no. However, we later find out that they really did meet at the scheduled time and Mort killed Ken and Tom. How come the lady at the counter didn't see them?

Correction: That could just mean that he intercepted him before going into the diner, or that lady wasn't there when they met.

Corrected entry: The scene where Rainey is steering the Bronco with the two dead men in it over the cliff the camera pans to a shot under the truck, where another vehicle is visible on the other side.

Correction: In other shots it shows that this is a junkyard area and you can see broken tractors and the like. Look under the truck on the other side.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Mort has gotten hold of Shooter's hat, he throws it on the coffee table. When he does, the dome of the hat becomes flattened a little bit. But in the next shot, the dome has been fixed.

Correction: It's quite possible, knowing how stiff those hats can be, that the dent in the hat popped out itself.

Corrected entry: The first time Mort sees the mouse in his shower, there are no glass fragments around it. The second time, there are many fragments.

Phoenix

Correction: There is a fragment of glass lying in the shadows. The other fragments are blocked by the shower door, but become visible when Mort slides the door open.

Corrected entry: In the scene where Mort Rainey's ex-wife comes in the house to get him to sign the divorce papers, she sees SHOOTER engraved deeply on the walls. Yet after she is dead and the cop comes to Mort's house the engravings are no longer there. They were very deep and could not be overlooked, so where did they go?

Correction: This scene takes place much later - look at the corn. It would take months for corn to grow that high so Mort would have had time to repair the cabin.

Corrected entry: When Johnny Depp is going to push the truck with the two bodies inside into the quarry he puts the truck into drive. In that gear it would have been impossible for him to push the truck. He should have put the truck in neutral instead.

Correction: He is not pushing the truck, he is "guiding" it. If you put a car with an automatic transmission in gear, it will move on its own (although somewhat slowly) without depressing the gas pedal. He is reaching through the window to direct the steering wheel, not pushing the car.

Corrected entry: Mort's house is only a few yards from the lake. In a scene we can see Mort walking a long slope down from the house, to the place where he finds the two dead bodies in the car. Later in that scene, he pushes the car into the lake from a high cliff. That can't possibly be the same lake, as the surface is much lower in the landscape when the car hits the water than outside Mort's house.

Correction: There is a cut in the scene after he pulls out the screw driver. He has obviously driven the car (from the passenger side - hard but possible) to another location (looks like a quarry). He then put the car in park, gets out, moves to the driver's side window, puts the car in drive and "guides" the car off the cliff and into the quarry.

Continuity mistake: When Mort is in Ken's office telling him about John harassing him. Ken punches the right side of the chess clock down to start it. Then Mort punches the left side, his right to stop it. Then when the camera switches back to Mort's point of view the the left side is up and the right side is down, then Ken punches down the left side to start it, when the right side should have been the one he had to press down to start it.

pross79

More mistakes in Secret Window

Mort: I buried my dog, mister.

More quotes from Secret Window

Trivia: Chicko, the dog, was 11 years old and blind. The dog was constantly bumping into furniture so it was very hard for the film crew. They only got one take of Chicko walking through the doggie door with out bumping into the wall or a piece of furniture and that is the take that was in the movie.

More trivia for Secret Window

Answer: 1993 Jeep Cherokee Country.

More questions & answers from Secret Window

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