Written and directed by veteran filmmaker Martin Donovan (Apartment Zero, The Substitute, Mad At The Moon), Somebody Is Waiting is a humorless, relentlessly dour, consistently flawed coming-of-age story that's also oddly moving. In a way, it's sort of like a low-budget, mysticism-free What Dreams May Come: Both revolve around the role that the death of a loved one plays in the life of a central character, and both will infuriate some while winning others with a hopelessly romantic view of a sepia-toned afterlife full of gentle New Age mysticism and soothing, soft-focus lighting. Pompadoured heartthrob Johnny Whitworth stars as the angry, defiant son of the angelic Nastassja Kinski and her boozy, hostile ex-husband Gabriel Byrne. When Kinski is murdered by a group of machine-gun-wielding bank robbers, Byrne is called upon to take care of Whitworth and his brothers and sisters, a development that brings with it a series of unpredictable twists and turns. Directed by Donovan with a liberal dose of film-school artiness, Somebody Is Waiting constantly seems on the verge of descending into self-parody, but to Donovan's credit, it never really does. No matter how silly or convoluted things get, the movie stays grounded in the nuanced, multidimensional performance of Whitworth, who underplays his role with surprising conviction. It would probably be wrong to consider Somebody Is Waiting a success, but as an interesting failure, it's strangely moving and hypnotic, and surprisingly engrossing.