You can’t paint over your past.

Genre: Drama, Thriller
Director: Joel David Moore, Adam Green
Role: Sasha
Cast: Zachary Levi, Amber Tamblyn, Joel David Moore, David Muller
Release Date: U.S., February 8 2008 (theatrical; limited)
MPAA Motion Picture Rating: PG-13

• Overview
• Memorable Sasha Quotations
• Said of Spiral
• Spiral Movie Trivia
• Critical Reception
• Spiral Online

More Spiral images of Tricia in our Spiral Photo Gallery

Portland in the fall is a solitary city. A city where a lonely man can lose himself, insulated beneath the cold, and the clouds, and the rain. Mason (Moore) is just such a man. A gifted artist, Mason is never-the-less neurotic and reclusive, living a life of anonymity, working from a drab cubicle in a florescent-lit phone bank, repeating the same meaningless conversation with faceless strangers ad nauseam.

Mason is never truly noticed by anyone, save his boss, Berkeley (Levi), not quite a friend, but a sole source of companionship in an otherwise isolated existence. That is, until he meets a gregarious co-worker named Amber (Tamblyn), a girl struggling with her own loneliness and need to define herself. Amber’s jovial demeanor and seemingly carefree attitude provides a sort of catharsis for Mason, and allows his true gifts to come to light as she poses for his art.

It is an unlikely, and unusual courtship that helps Mason find peace for possibly the first time in his life. But as Mason’s defenses lower, and the man inside is revealed, there may be something behind the surface darker than anyone expected. For not everything that is hidden should be found, and not every love is meant to be. And you can’t paint over your past…

* * * *

Tricia Helfer portrays Sasha, a small supporting role as Berkeley’s girlfriend (or rather one of them) who confronts Berkeley about his true motives behind his interest in the oddly-behaved Mason during a Christmas dinner. Sick of Sasha’s rotten attitude, Berkeley quickly throws her out of his house mid-dinner.

“Why did you even invite him?”

“Is that what this is? Fun? Is this entertainment?”

“That’s not friendship, Berkeley, that’s charity. It’s him being your pet.”

“You’re sick! You think it makes you a better person that you invite him over for dinner or that you talk to him for five minutes at work? If you wanted to help him, you’d get him help. You’re using him.”

Select quotations regarding the film from Tricia Helfer and her co-workers:

Co-star Zachary Levi (“Berkeley”) on working with Tricia:
“Tricia was a doll. She was ridiculously talented and ridiculously hot. She was so nice. She was only there one day and it was a great day. We sat around and talked about life and Battlestar Galactica and her husband and how great life was and it was a really fun time to be making the movie. That day with Tricia was a lot of fun. I hope that our paths cross again in the future and we get to work together again, because she really is a class act.”
- IF Magazine (US) interview, February 2008

Trivia coming soon/not available.

Spiral received a limited U.S. theatrical release in February 2008, followed by a March 2008 DVD premiere, and reviews on the film are therefore but few. The available reviews on the film have been mixed, however, mainly due to the film’s slow-paced and obscure storytelling which critics have either loved or hated. As Tricia makes but a small appearance in the film, her performance has mostly not been discussed, however the few times her performance has been brought up the mentions have been favorable only.

• Rating > Internet Movie Database: 6.5/10 (1,900 user votes counted)
• Rating > MetaCritic: No rating (professional)
• Rating > Rotten Tomatoes: 56% positive reviews, “Rotten” (professional)

Extracts from professional reviews:

“Boasting a great jazz-filled soundtrack, an effectively insular vision of rainy Portland, and a few sly surprises along the way, Spiral might not be a big-time multiplex sort of movie — but it is a surprisingly engrossing two-person character study that (gradually) reveals something quite a bit darker beneath the surface. [...] It might be a bit too “deliberately-paced” for those who like their movies to get right to the meat of the matter, but the flick clocks in at an efficient 86 minutes, and the performances are worthy of that investment all by themselves.”
- Scott Weinberg, FEARnet

“For filmmakers, there’s a fine line between being a film geek who nods reverently toward the assorted influences in one’s own work and being someone whose art is drawn so deeply and almost exclusively from the world of cinema that it flits between familiar and banal, derivative and plagiaristic. Spiral is a film too rooted in cinema, and not enough in the human. [...] It’s a wit-free homage to Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan that, for all its slick presentation, never comes close to hitting the mark of its forebears.”
- Ernest Hardy, L.A. Weekly

“Spiral is an interesting experiment in the evocation of things that do not actually exist, and it succeeds with sizzle. [...] When I use the words suspense, thrill, and sizzle, that does not imply the movie is fast-paced. Make no mistake: it’s largely psychological and character-driven. It’s patient. There isn’t a lot of gore, but the horror is all there, dark and unsettling as the clouds that gather for Pacific Northwest’s famed storms.”
- Stacy Laine Wilson, Horror.com

Awards & Nominations

Spiral has received a total of 2 awards.

Awards:
• Gold Vision Award (2007)
• Next Wave Award (2007) – 2nd Place

Personal Thoughts

Sandra: Today’s horror movies are not in my taste. More often than not they’re just too violent and gory for me to be able to enjoy, and in fact find anyone being able to do so a bit odd. Joel Moore’s Spiral was therefore a welcome breath of fresh air. Instead of cheap, nonstop butchery the film is in surprisingly good taste, with Moore dropping but scary hints here and there, leaving the (not entirely unpredictable but still satisfying) thrilling reveal only to the final minutes of the film. Although the film isn’t particularly scary (in the startling sense), Spiral is still an enjoyable thriller thanks to a great cast and good screenwriting.

In the film, Tricia Helfer makes but a brief appearance as the rather unpleasant Sasha. Because her role is so small, there isn’t really a lot to be said on it, but she is great in the one scene she’s in, and it’s definitely a fun little cameo-type turn from her.

Below are some Spiral-related links that may be of interest to you.

• Spiral official site
• Spiral TFL-approved fanlisting
• Spiral TFL-approved Sasha character fanlisting
• Spiral on IMDb.com
• Spiral on RottenTomatoes.com
• Spiral on Wikipedia.org

• Joel David Moore on IMDb.com
• Joel David Moore on Wikipedia.org

• Amber Tamblyn on AmTam.com
• Zachary Levi on Zachary-Levi.com