Also known as ‘Slumlord’ and ‘13 Cameras’ this film seems to have struggled to find an identity and that’s no surprise given it also struggled for a narrative, twist or anything approaching engagement with the audience. Still it did spawn a sequel ‘14 Cameras’ so at least the Go-Pro people seem to be doing well out of the franchise. Next up ‘15 Cameras and a Wi-fi dongle’ I suspect.
As a landlord myself I was hoping to pick up some tips about rent collection and stain removal but instead it was a peeping tom landlord who locks folk in his basement. Nothing new here then!
Young pregnant couple, Ryan and Claire, are looking for a new rental condo. They find a nice one which happens to have a fat and scruffy, monosyllabic landlord who stinks. That’s a stereotype right there. They take on the property but unknown to them the landlord has a Tandy gold card and has fitted out the whole house with a load of cameras - I’m guessing 13.
He watches their comings and goings on and we and he learn that Ryan is boffing his PA, the lovely Hannah. Luckily for the landlord Ryan brings his work home and he gets a front row seat for all the action, even underwater in their pool. At first I thought he was maybe a kindly overseer with perhaps his purpose being to keep some supernatural evil in check? This better plot wasn’t thought of or was as dismissed however, with our man just being a total creep, with a shot of all his used Kleenex around his computer monitors all we needed to know of his motivations.
His peeping runs parallel with the demise of the couple's relationship, with the affair suspected and Ryan exiled from the house. The Landlord tried to keep the girlfriend a secret by locking her in the basement but things come to a head when a camera is spotted and the basement hostage manages to escape. Will the landlord go without a fight and return the security deposit? No chance; armed with his hammer heads over to sort out his troublesome tenants - will he be able to re-let and retain his accreditation from the local authority?
This was easy viewing as basically the film went from a to b to c with no struggle at all. As mentioned I was hoping we’d get a wrong foot with the Landlord being a kindly soul watching over the couple like a guardian angel. Instead he was just a pervert who for some reason became homicidal towards the end. Maybe he’d done similar before, but it was kept vague, especially as he barely mumbled a dozen lines of dialogue in the whole film.
The two leads were passable but you didn’t really care for them, given their relationship was already crumbling when we first meet. The end was undercooked with the hammer filled home invasion over in moments with the minimum of fuss. The closing scenes of our man still in the rental market were probably meant to worry the viewer, but I was just happy to see an upturn in tenancy rates.
This was a passable thriller that has nothing to set it apart in a crowded genre, that could have done with a better bad guy and a bit more peril than him messing with their toothbrushes.
THE Tag Line : Not One For Rental 54%
No comments:
Post a Comment