When psychiatrist Dr. Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor) takes on the caseload of an exhausted co-worker he is immediately met with the challenge of a patient determined to take their own life. Henry Lethem (Ryan Gosling) declares to Sam that he will take his own life at midnight on his birthday in a bid to mimic his favourite painter. But as Sam tries to understand Henry and prevent him from taking his own life, Sam’s own life starts to fall apart.

Stay is a peculiar film for a multitude of reasons. On a personal level I had never heard of it until I decided to watch Ryan Gosling’s entire catalogue of movies. But that seems crazy given those involved. The film is directed by Marc Forster who immediately prior to this feature had made Monster’s Ball (2001) and Finding Neverland (2004). Forster has gone on to make even more prestigious films including The Kite Runner, Quantum of Solace and World War Z. It is written be David Benioff, perhaps now most famous for prestigious TV such as Game of Thrones and Three Body Problem. And stars Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling, Naomi Watts and Bob Hoskins. On the flip side though it has a heavy focus on suicide, feels like an attempt at a more mainstream David Lynch story and fails to deliver a satisfying ending. It was a massive Box Office failure and received a very limited cinema release in the UK failing to even break $60K on release. Despite all of this, the simple fact is that I was gripped throughout my watch as my mind tried to join the dots of the mysterious story. Only to be hugely disappointed that the solution was far less complicated than what I had imagined the ending would be myself.

The first thing to talk about is the peculiar manner in which the film constantly highlights that things are not as they seem. Camera angles are mostly off kilter, characters change positions as scenes playout, transitions between scenes often occur in obscure ways, scenes and actors will stutter and glitch, background players often appear in duplicates and there are many moments of Deja Vu. This is at times interesting and unique and at times overplayed ad nauseum. I understand the film makers deciding the entire film would be told with this “grammar” but it began to get tiresome a long time before the end.

The second thing that has an equal level of pros and cons is the acting performances. McGregor, using his American accent feels as though he is in an action movie. This was released in the same year that he appeared in Star Wars: Episode III and Michael Bay’s The Island and he spends a great deal of the movie racing around trying to give an increasing sense of urgency. Naomi Watts on the other hand had appeared in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive in 2001 and feels more at home giving her character a sense of uncertainty that the plot is calling for in every facet of the feature. The fact that she is playing the partner of a psychiatrist who herself is a survivor of a suicide attempt adds intrigue. Ryan Gosling on the other hand seems to deliver two performances. At the beginning of the film he plays moody and sullen. But as his character gets to do more he becomes far more interesting. The issue is that it feels like an awkward transition where the script is withholding information just to maintain the intrigue at the start of the film.

The result is a film that keeps you hooked as you try to solve the puzzle. But one that completely fails to deliver an ending that matches that investment. That makes it hard to recommend because you can either be impressed by its idiosyncrasies that keep you interested or utterly disappointed that the smoke and mirrors hide little substance.

The film’s failure at the Box Office could likely be attributed to it being incredibly difficult to market, the fact its storyline is focused on the difficult subject of suicide and that ultimately a lack of substance leaves its viewers cheated of what felt like a good puzzle.