Not the sort of film one would normally associate with a double Oscar winner

JamesHitchcock

Although "The Resident" was made by the long-dormant but now revived Hammer Film Productions, it is not a tale of supernatural horror like their famous offerings from the fifties, sixties and seventies (It does, however, feature a cameo performance from one of the biggest stars of those offerings, Christopher Lee). Rather, it is a thriller of the type which I have come to think of as the "…. from Hell" film. The basic premise of films of this type is that a stranger comes into the life of the central character. At first this stranger seems to be friendly or affable, but quickly turns out to be a dangerous criminal, and the hero or heroine realises that his or her life is in danger. This basic plot is not a new one- Alfred Hitchcock used it as the basis for some of his films, such as "Shadow of a Doubt" or "Strangers on a Train", but it was given a new lease of life in the late eighties and early nineties by the success of "Fatal Attraction", and still occasionally surfaces today. ("Orphan" and "Swimfan" are two other twenty-first century examples).

"Pacific Heights" brought us the tenant-from-Hell, and "Single White Female" the flatmate-from-Hell, and "The Resident", with its landlord-from-Hell, is another variation on this theme. The heroine is Juliet Devereau, a young doctor in a New York hospital, who is looking for an apartment to rent and finds a large, spacious apartment for a surprisingly reasonable rent. (The title may be a play on words, Juliet being a "resident" both in the sense of the American usage for a junior hospital doctor, what in Britain would be called a house officer, and in the sense of the occupier of a building).She meets her landlord, Max, and the two become friends. Indeed, they become more than just good friends; they go on a date, and come close to having sex, until Juliet pulls out, largely because of her unresolved feelings for her ex-boyfriend Jack. Juliet, however, still regards Max as a friend, until she realises that he is an unbalanced sexual predator who has become dangerously obsessed with her.

As a thriller, "The Resident" is a fairly straightforward one, with no devastating plot twists. It is made clear fairly early on that Max is the villain, although there is a brief red herring which suggests wrongly that his elderly grandfather August (the part played by Lee) is the voyeur who has been spying on Juliet. Helped by some spooky music of the type more often found in horror themes, director Antti Jokinen is able to create a fair amount of tension in the scenes where Max is stalking Juliet.

The main problem, however, is the lack of originality. Films of this nature, especially those with a woman-in-peril theme, have become over-familiar in recent years. Some examples from the great "from Hell" boom of the nineties managed to pull off some surprises, and some such as "Fatal Attraction", "Single White Female" and "the Hand that Rocks the Cradle" managed to endow their villains with a surprising amount of psychological depth and complexity. There is nothing like that in "The Resident", although there is an attempt to provide Max with a tragic back-story. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a forgettable villain; most of the best ones in "from Hell" movies have, in fact, been female. Although Hilary Swank is adequate is the threatened Juliet, a routine potboiler like this one is not the sort of film one would normally associate with a double Oscar winner. 5/10

score 5/10

JamesHitchcock 22 November 2011

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2522289/