Weak tea

I came across a critical article on Crewdson’s series “Twilight” in Artforum magazine. The author, David Frankel, calls Crewdson’s work a disappointingly weak tea. 

He believes that Crewdson settles down with the special effect by itself, he doesn’t go behind it. In opposition to Steven Spielberg who in for example Close Encounters used special effects only to portray the clutter of an average suburban family life. According to Frankel Crewdson’s images only look like films stills but don’t go beyond that. As any film director Crewdson creates and oversees thousands of images to fill the proverbial 90 minutes (length of a typical motion picture), but still manages to make a mediocre movie.

There is no doubt that Crewdson’s work is deeply soaked in popular culture and specifically American mainstream cinema representation of suburban life. However does he really make a mediocre movie over and over again? I don't think he does. He draws sketches for viewers based on his (our) culture and leaves the viewers free to interpret his work according to their knowledge, awareness. I believe there’s more to his images than just special effects, do you?