Review of The Resident (2011) by James . — 09 Jul 2011

The Resident is another one of those piss-poor horror movies that uses too many false alarms, plot devices that feels to overpanned and character substance that makes you feel like leaving your house and beat up the first person you see.

I very much like Hillary Swank as an actress, but she keeps on jumping back and forth being in really outstanding films to movies that I can't help forgetting. She tries her best with the material she's given and trying to pull off that sex appeal. So, in The Resident she plays an ER doctor looking for an apartment to live and starts to become paranoid living in it, while the owner of the apartment, Max is stalking her, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

At first, I found Jeffrey Dean Morgan to be likeable until the movie backtracks to show us that he was stalking Swank's character at the very beginning. I just thought that his character was disgustingly sad, and I wanted to see something similar to The Comedian from Watchmen, where you love to hate the character.

As for Christopher Lee, I was praying to Kubrick that he wasn't going to play some creepy old man, and he did in this movie. Even when he was speaking to his grandson, he just seem like a pushover. I just can't believe they wasted such an iconic actor like Christopher Lee, who played the most memorable characters in franchises like Lord of the Rings and Star Wars.

Directed by by Antti Jokinen, who has made only TV movies until he did The Resident. Through most of the movie, it just uses either a predictable scare or something we've saw in another that's been done much better. For example, there was a scene where jumps through the mirror on a wall came right from Nightmare on Elm Street. I just hate how they portray all the male characters as bad guys because we see all the female characters as being nice and understanding.

Overall, The Resident is a boring movie to watch that has no good scares to a concept that can't be worked around as being a great contribution to photoplay. The only things I can say that's good is the how the tension is set up and built, and the set design on the apartment that the movie mostly revolves around. But if you're curious about what the movie is like, than I won't stop you from watching, and I won't look at you any less.