Rish Outfield's reviews
We had a lot of trouble deciding to add this to the site. Is it Horror? Well, when the film was over we agreed that it was, but it's mostly a detective story until the end. Robert De Niro is very cool, as usual, and Mickey Rourke is convincingly scuzzy (also as usual), but to be frank, I didn't enjoy Angel Heart. It was disturbing (intentionally) and confusing (also intentionally). It was dirty, sure, but in a brutal, unsettling way. At the end, I neither understood what I had just seen, nor wanted to rewind it to figure it out. Luckily, tyranist explained it all for me (he had figured out the ending much earlier), but I got the impression that he didn't like it either.
Best Scare: A scene where Rourke almost kills his bed-partner . . . frightening.
I'd Recommend It To: Not many people. De Niro completists, mostly.

The tyranist's thoughts
This one is kind of hard to follow at times, but to tell you the truth I had the major plot element figured out within five minutes of the opening. In some ways it was disturbing and strange, but in others it seemed to lack the right delivery. I spent most of the movie trying to figure out what different elements meant (like the recurring fans). The characters aren't terribly complex and most of them aren't on the screen long enough for us to care anyway. I will say that this is a horror movie in spite of its whodunit atmosphere. There is one scene that is visually disturbing enough to warrant horror, and the subject matter begs for it. It is, however, one of the borderline class that people might want to call a thriller, but then where does the tagline 'It will scare you to your soul' fit in?
I remember the movie being very controversial when it came out, but I found very little to offend. Just one little hint for you: in this movie, the name Ciphre doesn't mean nothing. Oh . . . and the title is really, really clever once you get to the end and all is revealed.