|
|
Usually, I don't bother reviewing something I dislike, preferring to congratulate achievement rather than to condemn ineptitude. But ineptitude runs rampant here, especially given the talent. I've rated it 2 because if nothing else (and there is nothing else), it does have some very fine camera-work and effective enough music. The problem is that there is really no story in this film. From the time Swank takes her $3,800 Brooklyn apartment, we know she's in some kind of danger. From 15 minutes later on, we know exactly what that danger consists of, and who poses it to her. After that, it is nothing but a long series of voyeuristic observations and meanderings through keyholes, panels, drains - you name it, it works for observability - and that's it. We never learn anything about any of the characters beyond what they do for a living and why Swank has left her husband. We never learn anything about what made the madman who owns the building into a madman. We never learn anything about his grandfather, who brought him up, except that Gramps doesn't seem to like him too much. When Madman Landlord knocks off Grandpa, we have no idea why he does so, nor what he does for the rest of the story with the body. When Swank, in mortal danger (mostly of understanding the plot) hardly registers the sight of her dead husband literally hanging around, it's hard to believe that she ever loved him, let alone still does. Swank is shown as an apparently important doctor at her hospital, yet she seems to just drop in and out of it at will, and go directly from heroically saving lives to complaining to a colleague about her married life. Worse, and this is really worse, from the time she enters the new apartment for the first time, about 85% of the rest of the film takes place in that apartment, yet the viewer has absolutely no idea what that apartment looks like. Despite the fact that she and her separated husband seem truly astonished that she can find such a wonderful and large apartment for $3,800 a month, to me (a Brooklyn resident), it looks like little more than a dilapidated and pretty small apartment, possessing nothing to sell it except a couple of window views of the outer world. The camera work is so intensely close up and restrictive that one never gets any sense of proportion as to what the total apartment looks like, one room from another, the true size of the place, what room leads to the next, etc., etc. There is not one regularly lighted scene at any time in the apartment. Does Swank not have light bulbs or something with which to open the curtains on her windows? All is murk! When the final, rather gargantuan battle between Swank and Morgan arrives (it's like a knives, axes, needles and staple gun version of the great fight in 1952's SCARAMOUCHE, but even the candlelit opera house that one takes place in has a hundred times the visual clarity of anything seen in RESIDENT, but at least this is where the excellent camera-work mostly comes in), most of the time I can't keep track of where they are fighting it or where Swank is headed, so little definition has been given to either the apartment or the rest of the building up to that point. All the outdoor scenes (little more than for Swank's jogging moments) are filmed on location in Brooklyn, but all the interiors seem to have been filmed in New Mexico - and in a rather minuscule part of New Mexico at that - like a darkened sound stage. Given that such excellent actors as Swank, Morgan, Lee and Pace have nothing to act except (in order) hysteria, madness, old age and blandness, it's no wonder they can't register much, especially as the screenplay is of no help to anybody and the storyline remains almost totally without background. I actually felt cheated to see two-time Academy Award winner Swank in such a mishmash (and she's responsible for it, since she produced it; are good roles that hard to find with two Oscars on the shelf?), and to see Christopher Lee's name added to the cast obviously to sell the film to people like myself, since he doesn't have ten lines to speak in the entire film and cannot be on the screen for a grand total of more than about three minutes. It's the kind of film that asks the question, Why was this made?, and then proceeds not to be able to answer it.
score 2/10
joe-pearce-1 7 July 2014
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3046288/ |
|
30-11-2019 10:11:05
