Review of Pacific Heights (1990) by James S — 23 Oct 2008

Promising but eventually disappointing thriller that upon release was viewed as a kind of real estate Fatal Attraction. Frankly, trying to secure a mortgage and buy a property these days is way scarier and tense than anything on offer here!

Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith rent their downstairs apartment to tenant from hell, Michael Keaton. Modine is fairly non-descript, and you spend a long time wondering just where he's been the last ten years, and Griffith delivers all her lines in the same high pitched whiney tone. Keaton is as expected the real star here though he's kind of wasted with a character who's plans are never explained quite properly and who just doesn't seem evil enough to ever attain the heights of great movie psycho-dom.

There are one or two decently suspenseful moments but these are tempered with a dreadful dream sequence and a fairly rotten script.

The plot comes together too quickly and isn't clarified well enough. Pacific Heights could have been a great film, as it is, it's just not nasty enough and comes off like a TV movie of the week.