Alan Cumming’s 2007 directorial debut, The Suffering Man’s Charity (alternately titled Ghost Writer), is a film that begs to be dissected—not for its merits, which are fleeting, but for its audacious flaws. A lurid cocktail of Gothic melodrama, black comedy, and psychological thriller, the film collapses under the weight of its own ambition, offering a cautionary tale about the perils of creative overreach. Cumming, who wrote, directed, and stars in the project, delivers a performance as unhinged as the narrative itself, playing John Vandermark, a pretentious, washed-up crime novelist whose life unravels when he takes in a manipulative young protégé, Sebastian (David Boreanaz). What follows is a spiral of obsession, murder, and meta-textual madness that feels less like a coherent story and more like a fever dream staged in a Victorian-themed dinner theater.
Direction and Style: All Style, No Substance
Cumming’s direction is undeniably bold, but it’s also hopelessly self-indulgent. The film’s visual language—a barrage of Dutch angles, chiaroscuro lighting, and crimson-drenched interiors—evokes the campy excess of 1960s Hammer Horror films, but without the self-awareness to lean into the absurdity. Instead, Cumming plays it straight, framing scenes with a solemnity that clashes jarringly with the script’s overwrought dialogue (“I am a god of the written word!” Vandermark declares to no one in particular). The result is a tonal car crash: Is this a satire of literary narcissism, a Freudian psychodrama, or a straight-faced thriller? The film can’t decide, and neither can the audience.
Cumming’s background as a stage actor is evident in the film’s theatricality. Scenes are staged like monologue-heavy playlets, with characters delivering soliloquies to empty rooms or glaring into mirrors with operatic despair. While this approach might work in a confined theatrical space, on film it feels claustrophobic and static. The few attempts at kinetic energy—a frenetic murder sequence, a dreamlike flashback involving a typewriter dripping with blood—come off as desperate bids to inject momentum into a narrative that otherwise plods along like a drunken Shakespearean actor.
Script and Performances: A Cast Adrift
The screenplay, penned by Cumming, is the film’s Achilles’ heel. Laden with purple prose and Freudian clichés (Vandermark’s repressed homosexuality and mommy issues are telegraphed with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer), it mistakes verbosity for depth. Characters exist as mouthpieces for thematic grandstanding rather than fully realized people. Anne Heche, as Vandermark’s exasperated publisher, and Carrie Fisher, in a criminally underused role as his sardonic editor, try valiantly to elevate the material, but they’re given little to work with beyond eye-rolling quips and exasperated sighs.
David Boreanaz, fresh off his Bones fame, seems miscast as the seductive, sinister Sebastian. His performance oscillates between wooden detachment and pantomime villainy, lacking the nuance required to sell the character’s Machiavellian manipulations. Cumming, meanwhile, commits fully to Vandermark’s descent into madness, but his portrayal veers into unintentional self-parody. Whether he’s writhing on the floor in a cocaine-fueled tantrum or delivering monologues about his “artistic genius,” the character’s unrelenting unlikeability makes it impossible to invest in his downfall.
Box Office and Reception: A Flop by Any Metric
The film’s commercial failure was as dramatic as its narrative. After a muted premiere at the 2007 Edinburgh International Film Festival, it bypassed theaters entirely in the U.S., relegated to a direct-to-DVD release that earned an estimated $47,000—a paltry sum even by indie standards. Critics were equally unkind. The New York Post dismissed it as “a vanity project gone rancid,” while Variety noted, “Cumming’s ambition is admirable, but his execution is all thumbs.” Audience scores reflect this disdain: IMDb rates it 4.7/10 (based on 508 votes), TMDB a dismal 3.9/10 (18 votes), and Rotten Tomatoes’ audience score sits at 24%. Even among Cumming’s devoted fanbase, the film remains a footnote, overshadowed by his acclaimed stage work and TV roles (The Good Wife, Instinct).
Legacy and Curiosities: A Cult Film in Search of a Cult
Despite its flaws, The Suffering Man’s Charity is not without intrigue. Its production was a whirlwind affair, shot in just 15 days on a shoestring budget in New York City. The rushed schedule shows in the film’s haphazard editing and uneven sound design, but it also lends the project a frenetic energy that occasionally works in its favor. The decision to retitle the film from Ghost Writer (to avoid confusion with Roman Polanski’s 2010 political thriller The Ghost Writer) feels like a metaphor for the movie itself: a shape-shifting entity unsure of its identity.
Carrie Fisher’s involvement adds a layer of poignancy. Her role as the acerbic editor Charlotte is one of her final film appearances before her death in 2016, and while her screen time is minimal, her wit cuts through the murk like a lighthouse beam. Another curious footnote: The film’s exploration of toxic mentorship and artistic ego parallels Cumming’s real-life advocacy for mental health and LGBTQ+ rights, themes he’s addressed more thoughtfully in his memoirs and activism.
Conclusion: A Fascinating Disaster
The Suffering Man’s Charity is a film that defies easy categorization. It’s too earnest to be camp, too messy to be avant-garde, and too incoherent to be taken seriously as drama. Yet, for all its failings, it’s impossible to look away. Cumming’s naked ambition—to create a Hitchcockian psychodrama filtered through his own flamboyant sensibilities—is admirable, even as it crashes and burns. For cinephiles who revel in “so bad it’s almost good” curios, this film offers a treasure trove of unintentional laughs and head-scratching choices. For everyone else, it’s a grim reminder that not all passion projects deserve resurrection.
In the pantheon of directorial debuts, The Suffering Man’s Charity sits alongside The Room and Showgirls—films that transcend mere badness to become perverse works of art. Whether that’s a compliment or a condemnation depends on your tolerance for chaos.
Interesting Facts (Expanded):
- Cumming’s Solo Effort: This remains Cumming’s only feature film as director, writer, and lead actor—a trifecta he’s since avoided, calling the experience “humbling, in the worst way” (Guardian, 2008).
- Fisher’s Improv: Carrie Fisher reportedly ad-libbed most of her lines, including the biting quip, “Your prose is as bloated as your ego.”
- Budget Constraints: The entire film was shot in Cumming’s New York apartment and a nearby park to save money.
- Soundtrack Irony: The score, composed by Danny Lux (Grey’s Anatomy), is surprisingly lush and orchestral—a stark contrast to the film’s cheap visuals.
- Cameo Clash: Cumming initially wanted Ian McKellen to play Vandermark, but producers insisted he take the role himself.
- Festival Fate: After Edinburgh, the film was rejected by Sundance, Tribeca, and Toronto, cementing its status as a pariah.