Elijah Woods' Twisted Hitchcockian Thriller Is So Good,...

Elijah Woods' Twisted Hitchcockian Thriller Is So Good, You'll Wish You Saw It Sooner

Posté 2026-06-07 20:05:03

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With his 2013 thriller Grand Piano, director and musician Eugenio Mira (famed for his 'lost' Corey Feldman vehicle The Birthday) paired Elijah Wood with a disembodied John Cusack for a very heightened trip into the anxiety of being a classical musician. Not content to simply be a movie about the difficulties of performance and seeking perfection, it gives its protagonist another crisis too: a sniper rifle trained at him from the nosebleed section, ready to shoot at the first missed note. The premise is so striking and high-concept that it would be easy to expect the movie as a whole to be pretty one-note and silly, but it’s grounded by Wood’s neurotic and soulful performance, as well as a screenplay coming from future Oscar-winner Damien Chazelle.