Tuesday 18 December 2012

DVD review: The resident


A girl moves to a new flat. Sinister things start to happen.

After a long wait I’m back and the next movie on the list is “The resident”. Never saw so much misguided effort.
It’s very hard to not spoil the big concept. Suffice to say that it’s the kind of thing that sounds very scary if it would happen in real life but doesn’t translate so well filmically.
It’s not like they didn’t try. The cinematography is suitably moody thank to Guillermo Navarro, a long time collaborator of the other Guillermo, Del Toro of Hellboy fame. The movie itself is professionally done with a lot of talented actors. Hilary Swank is the damsel in distress, Jeffrey Dean Morgan the strange neighbor, there is even a cameo from Christopher Lee himself.
Yet they don’t manage to make it work. We couldn’t help but feel kinda sorry for the bad guy, probably the least threatening bad guy in recent horror history.
With this I don’t want to say that it is terrible. We waded through the running time with no effort and the concept is still interesting enough that our attention was kept awake.
Conclusion: This will probably end up in those late night reruns. Good to keep insomnia at bay at least.

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