The iconic horror studio that has risen from the dead, Hammer films, releases their first film on their 2011 slate, The Resident. Hammer recently released one of the best remakes I’ve ever seen, Let Me In, last year and since viewing that masterpiece I was all about the return of Hammer films. However, as with all production companies your going to have your good and bad films and then your going to have your alright films that we be sort of unforgettable after the first go around. That can be said for this film, The Resident which hits Blu-ray and DVD on March 29th.
The Resident has an all star cast with two time Oscar Award Winner Hillary Swank as Dr. Juliet Devereau, a women that has recently separated from her husband and has just moved into an apartment in Brooklyn New York all by herself. Everyone around her, including her new landlord Max (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) seem to be nice and she seems to be settling into her new place and her new life well. However, this won’t last for long. Strange things begin happening in the apartment and soon Juliet begins to feel uncomfortable in her own home. As she begins to uncover the truth, she soon finds out that her landlord Max is obsessed with her in more ways than one.
There is a lot of great things about this film and then there are a lot of not so great things. The great things are that the film has a great cast of seasoned actors which include Hillary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Hammer films veteran Christopher Lee, Lee Pace and Aunjanue Ellis. The performances in the film are good and you really get a feel for the actors in their roles. The film also has some great production value. Director Antti J. Jokinen really knows how to pick his shots and use them to make the film look creepy and uneasy. The locations and use of lighting really helped give this film that overall feel of uneasiness to go with the suspense of the story. Unfortunately the problem was the story. The script kind of lacked the momentum to keep me really interested in the film. I kind of had an idea of where the film was going as there have been many films with the same similar plotline of “women alone in her apartment and scary things happen to her” thing going on. It was kind of predicable to say the least, and although the film was put together really well, I just could not find myself really getting into the film the way I would of liked too.
The Blu-ray disc is barebones and just contains the film in 1080p High-Definition Widescreen 2:35:1 with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 with English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Hammer films back in their hey day of horror made a lot films that were so-so in their efforts to please horror fans. You can lump The Resident into their so-so pile of films in the present. It is a film that has good acting and production value but it is also a film that does not really have a plot that is super original. I can see a lot of people agreeing with me on this one. It’s alright but it has it’s up and downs. Unfortunately the story is one of it’s downs, but it’s not so bad that film is hard to watch. I am sure it will find it’s audience, but for me it was just another suspense film wit horror like elements.
– Horror Bob
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