'Wakefield' proves a fascinating yet frustrating journey into madness

The literary ghost, if not the macabre spirit, of Edgar Allan Poe haunts "Wakefield," a movie notable for its use of a self-justifying, first-person narrator/nut job of the sort Poe famously featured in so many of his tales.

In this case, the wackadoodle protagonist is Howard Wakefield (Bryan Cranston), a Manhattan lawyer who arrives at his suburban home late one spring evening, only to follow a raccoon into the attic of his detached garage - and then, for the remainder of the film, to never leave it.

OK, technically he does venture out every so often: initially to raid the refrigerator when his wife, Diana (Jennifer Garner), is out and later to scavenge from local trash cans. But for the most part, Howard hides, spying through a small window on Diana and their twin daughters (Victoria Bruno and Ellery Sprayberry), who eventually come to conclude that Daddy has disappeared for good, or died.

Why does he do it?

Howard and Diana had recently quarreled. "Why go in there now," Howard muses, in voice-over, on the first night of his self-imposed exile, "just to endure another predictable scene with my wife?" Like many a Poe narrator, he tries - with a surprising amount of success - to make his actions plausible, even if he fails to convince us that he's completely sane.

"Who hasn't had the impulse to just put their life on hold for a moment?" Howard asks rhetorically, once he has decided to stay put. (He also stops going to the office, shaving and cutting his hair.)

Well, sure. But to act on such a fantasy, and for a year? Written and directed by Robin Swicord, "Wakefield" feels more like a strange thought experiment than something that a reasonable person might actually do. Swicord is concerned with the minutiae of survival, but she's also interested in deeper philosophical questions. "I never left my family," Howard tells us. "I left myself."

Cranston is consistently watchable, although Howard's journey into - and, at least potentially, out of - madness is a tough one to keep up with.

"I've stranded myself," Howard laments. So, too, does "Wakefield."