Dr. Carter Nix (John Lithgow) is a child psychologist desperate to get test subjects for his father's research. He has multiple personality disorder. He kidnaps his wife's friend and her two kids. His wife Jenny (Lolita Davidovich) suspects Carter who is studying their daughter Amy. Her old flame Jack Dante (Steven Bauer) pursues her after the death of his wife who was Jenny's patient at the hospital. Their kiss supposedly led to her death.

This is written and directed by the great Brian de Palma. There is a deliberate cheesiness about this movie that threw me off right away. The multiple personality disorder is cheese of the highest order. The rest of the movie is also very cheesy. Jenny and Jack's affair is full-on cheese whiz with slow motion kissing that caused his wife's death. It's the dream reveals. There are so many 'Dressed to Kill' references that this may as well be a sequel. It never stops which leads me to question if all of it is intentional. I decided that he didn't intentionally set out to make a bad movie.

The psychologist Dr. Carter Nix (John Lithgow) leaves a park with his little daughter Amy and takes a ride with the mother of another child. He tries to convince her to leave her son travel to Norway for an experiment with his father but she does not accept. Dr. Nix uses chloroform to take her boy and leaves the unconscious woman in the trunk of her car with his brother Cain to get rid of her. His wife Dr. Jenny Nix (Lolita Davidovich) is worried about his obsession for Amy. When Jenny meets her former lover Jack (Steven Bauer) in a store, she has a love affair with him and plans to leave her husband. However Carter discovers their love affair and he kills a babysitter and leaves clues incriminating Jack. Then he suffocates Jenny with a pillow, puts her body into her car and submerges it in a swamp. Carter goes to the police department claiming that his wife and his daughter are missing. He also tells that he had seen a stranger in the park. Lt. Terri (Gregg Henry) and Sgt. Cally (Tom Bower) that are in charge of the investigation asks Carter to do a sketch of the suspect. However a veteran detective recalls the case of Carter's father and he summons Dr. Waldheim (Frances Sternhagen) that discloses how deranged his father was. Out of the blue, Jenny returns and now the police needs to find where the kidnapped children are.

"Raising Cain" is a deceptive thriller by Brian De Palma, with a flawed, conventional, predictable and poorly story. The plot is unbelievable, commercial and silly, with the strange situations easily resolved. How could Jenny escape from a car submerged in a swamp? Her infidelity that triggers completely madness in Carter becomes "politically correct". Jack saving Amy with the spear coming toward him is ridiculous. The conclusion might be a joke or a tribute to "Dressed to Kill". My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Síndrome de Caim" ("Cain Sindrome")

Jenny Nix (Lolita Davidovich),wife of eminent child psychologist Carter Nix (John Lithgow),becomes increasingly concerned about her husband's seemingly obsessive concern over the upbringing of their daughter (Amanda Pombo).

This is not De Palma's strongest film and is more than a little strange and far-fetched. We do have just a bit of voyeurism, which seems necessary to make this part of the De Palma oeuvre. But seriously, this whole film is like a 90-minute audition tape for John Lithgow, showing off his range of characters and emotions.

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly summed it up nicely when he wrote, "Is Raising Cain a good movie? No way. You could almost say it's intentionally bad — a gleeful piece of jerry-built schlock. Yet De Palma's naughty-boy gamesmanship has a perverse fascination, even when it doesn't work (which is most of the time)."