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Mistakes

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. See more...

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One should really stay to the very end of the credits, as Johnny Depp (Mort) sings an amusing little tune. See more...

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Movie Mistakes blog

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Secret Window (2004) - 26 corrections

starring John Turturro, Johnny Depp, Maria Bello (add more)

Genres: Horror, Mystery, Thriller

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

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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. [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.]
Edit Corrected by MovieFan612
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. [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.]
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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. [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.]
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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. [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.]
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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. [The stickers are there, just out of frame.]
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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. [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.).]
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At the end of the movie when Amy visits Mort, the cabin walls all have "Shooter - Kill Her" etched into the wood. But when the sheriff shows up, the carvings are gone. [Enough time has passed when the sheriff shows up for the corn to grow to full height. All the walls could be sanded clean or replaced in that time.]
Edit Corrected by Phoenix
At the climax, Mort stabs Amy in the lower leg. She stands up and leaves a prominent bloody footprint on a stray piece of paper on the ground. Problem is, there's no way the bottom of her shoe could be covered in blood to leave the footprint. She's been bleeding for less than five seconds, and there's no pool of blood for her shoe to pick up and make the footprint with. [Amy had just kicked Mort in the face, bloodying up his nose and teeth quite a bit.]
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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. [Mort has more than one screwdriver. The one Amy sees inside the house is the one he used on the dog earlier on.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
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. [ 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 completly 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.]
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As Mort is preparing to pull the screwdriver out of dead Tom Greenleaf, Tom's right eye develops a nasty tic. [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.]
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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. [She never really said that, it was just his paranoia.]
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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. [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.]
Edit Corrected by Phoenix
When Mort and Shooter are out side and and aren't in a fight after his dog was killed, you will see on Morts' glasses a reflection of bright camera lights. [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.]
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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? [That could just mean that he intercepted him before going into the diner, or that lady wasn't there when they met.]
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The ease with which Mort gets away with 4 murders seems too good to be true. Firstly, why didn't the investigating cops take a look at the freshly dug up ground which was to become his corn patch? With Mort being the only real suspect it's impossible that they wouldn't have dug up the ground or used ground penetrating radar around his house. Secondly, he had to hide no fewer than 3 cars, not an easy task and the conveniently located nearby body of water would almost certainly have been searched by divers. Thirdly, it's unlikely that he could have cleared up all the forensic evidence of the murders around his house such as blood and fibres. Finally, how would he have completely erased all the engravings on the furniture and walls, at least one of which definitely says "shoot her" (across a doorway)? [First, it's a small town with probably little money for funding the police and their investigations, when Mort goes to the cops they could barely do anything for him. You need a warrant to search a person's property, as for the cars, he may not have gotten rid of them at all, but told the police he found the one just sitting at his house. And as for the door, furniture and walls, all of that stuff can be replaced or simply sanded out.]
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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. [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.]
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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. [It's quite possible, knowing how stiff those hats can be, that the dent in the hat popped out itself.]
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After Mort has killed Ted and his wife, all of the Shooter carvings on the wall are gone. [Mort painted over them.]
Edit
The first time Mort sees the mouse in his shower, there are no glass fragments around it. The second time, there are many fragments. [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.]
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