A movie like “The Deaths of Ian Stone” makes you lament the fickle nature of show business. I know only two things about director Dario Piana and writer Brendan Hood: Together they made one of the most unique science fiction thrillers I’ve ever seen, and they have not done much other filmmaking work since.
I don’t know anything about why their cinema resumes have dried up, but I can say that I wish we had more movies out there like “The Deaths of Ian Stone.” Starring Mike Vogel as the title character, the 2007 film tells the story of an average American man who suddenly finds himself being killed by mysterious creatures, then waking up in entirely new lives. This is the kind of concept that succeeds or fails based on the execution of a story’s First Act. Fortunately “The Deaths of Ian Stone” makes Ian into a realistic and likable character, then puts him in his existentially confounding predicament in a narratively organic way.
At this point Piana and Hood could have either tried to explain everything with a mythology or remained mysterious. Perhaps if they had done the latter, hipsters and indie film buffs would have proclaimed “The Deaths of Ian Stone” to be an avant-garde masterpiece. Instead they opt for the former, which means the intriguing story inevitably gets somewhat demystified by exposition. The idea of alternate dimensions and timelines is more fascinating when it remains a bit murky. Once you concoct a fictional universe to graft onto those themes, it is very difficult to keep things from coming across as silly.
This means that “The Deaths of Ian Stone,” instead of being great all the way through, starts out on a high note and then lowers its sights out of necessity. The remainder of the film is still entertaining, to be clear, and it is paced so tightly that it holds up to multiple viewings. But because the filmmakers couldn’t come up with a mythology for their universe that rose to the lofty standards they had set up, the movie remains a bit disappointing.
Yet I wouldn’t have been a bit disappointed if there wasn’t a whole lot of good in “The Deaths of Ian Stone.” That is why the seeming oblivion to which Piana and Hood has been consigned is profoundly disconcerting. Again, I know no details as to what happened to them or why. Assuming they are alive and decent human beings, however, I hope that they get to tell us more stories. “The Deaths of Ian Stone” shows a level of ambition seldom seen in modern filmmaking, and the final result is certainly worth a watch.