Seriously - this is one of those films which is a whole different movie the second time through, since you know the "secret ending" and can "get" what's going on.
The basic story appears to be that a Gene, a cop turned mystery writer (with a recurrent dream of being buried alive), sees a new woman (LFB) moving in across the street. He meets her, is incredibly witty and charming, she's afraid of something, and they steam the windows. She invites him back for seconds that evening.
When he gets there, she's dead. He starts on a haphazard, emotionally-intense investigation into her murder - at least until morning, when everyone begins to deny she was ever in the house, let alone that she was murdered. A new woman lives in the house, and claims to have been there for several years. There is no case file on the murder, but Gene finds a scene that looks strikingly similar in an old case - something that he and his partner investigated several years ago. Things get weird from there.
It's hard to even begin to laud this film without giving stuff away, so I'll be as oblique and intriguing as I can.
One of the things I like best about the told-in-flashback style of the movie is that as the movie progresses, the flashbacks change. When a flashback repeats, sometimes you see it from a different angle, sometimes it is longer, continuing past where it ended the previous time, and sometimes it's simply closer to reality - having been "idealized" or "fictionalized" (remember, Gene's a writer - though the movie is not one of those "and it was all the book he'd just completed" cop outs) the first time through.
That's why it's fun to watch this movie a second time - to see where and what changes, and to understand the significance of seemingly meaningless but repetitive background images (a moving van being loaded with a white cabinet) which turn up again later. AND to watch the looks on the face of the friend you're showing it to - who hasn't seen it before - as they try to figure out what's up.
Watch this movie twice. Really.
