Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
Over the course of three days Ross, a college dropout addicted to crystal-meth, encounters a variety of oddball folks - including a stripper named Nikki and her boyfriend, the local meth producer, The Cook - but all he really wants to do is hook up with his old girlfriend, Amy.
Spun is a visually frenetic portrait of meth addiction directed by Jonas Åkerlund, whose music-video background gives the film its most distinctive quality: a hyperkinetic, fragmented cinematography full of rapid edits, distorted imagery, and hallucinatory color grading that genuinely captures the tweaker headspace. The acting is serviceable with an eclectic cast (Jason Schwartzman, Mickey Rourke, Brittany Murphy), though performances are uneven. The plot is thin and episodic by design — more texture than narrative — which works thematically but limits dramatic engagement. Novelty is solid but not exceptional; the film borrows heavily from the Requiem for a Dream school of addiction cinema and feels derivative of that wave. The ending deflates without real resolution or earned insight, leaving the film feeling like a stylistic exercise more than a complete statement.