Elijah Woods' Twisted Hitchcockian Thriller Is So Good, You'll Wish You Saw It Sooner

With his 2013 thriller Grand Piano, director and musician Eugenio Mira (famed for his 'lost' Corey Feldman vehicle The Birthday) paired Elijah Wood with a disembodied John Cusack for a very heightened trip into the anxiety of being a classical musician. Not content to simply be a movie about the difficulties of performance and seeking perfection, it gives its protagonist another crisis too: a sniper rifle trained at him from the nosebleed section, ready to shoot at the first missed note. The premise is so striking and high-concept that it would be easy to expect the movie as a whole to be pretty one-note and silly, but it’s grounded by Wood’s neurotic and soulful performance, as well as a screenplay coming from future Oscar-winner Damien Chazelle.