The Inhabitant

After a strange series of incidents, a young woman believes that the constant attempts to medicate her instead of letting it manifest into a repeat of the deadly family legacy as a notorious serial killer's grisly history over the town are what's starting to wield a deadly influence over the town.

Overall, this is a rather disappointing and not-that-enjoyable genre effort. About the only positive to be found here is the generally impressive build-up this takes towards the issue of mental health and insanity. There's quite a lot of work throughout here that demonstrates the wrongheaded approach that this one employs, about bottling up the emotions with medications or outside forces in the hopes that it would prevent the very real signs of stress being exhibited about what's going on which provides quite a fine starting point here. Filled in nicely with the bits about the family's legacy that continually works its way through the film managing to fill in the crucial details of what's supposedly at stake if she continues on the way is she and also providing some decent attempts at stalking that crop up throughout here, it's all pretty much the only aspects to like here. This one does manage to fall short quite heavily with some big problems. The main issue here is just how dull and uneventful this one plays out, managing to go through the motions of a story in far more time than it should due to a slew of unnecessary and aggravating subplots that serve the film no purpose at all. The constant mentions by those around her to stay in line and keep taking medication, the intrusions by the police officers who seem to leave after one piece of information so they have to keep coming back for me, and a series of side-characters that aren't important to the main storyline clog up the running time here so it's not only confusing and overlong but severely uninteresting as well. There's little reason for this one to glaze over this concept in the manner it does when it's trying to make as detailed a connection between these factors that it is, resulting in a film long of dull, bland conversations without much time for scares or stalking until the end which is all too little, too late to mean anything.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, and children-in-jeopardy.

There are plenty of great slow burn horror movies.

This is definitely not one of them.

I'll start with the good. Parents are clearly trying their best to carry the film, Dermot Mulroney and Leslie Bibb. The main actress is ok, which may be more of an indictment of the writing than the actress herself, since I thought she was good in Hellraiser. Practicals are good, but they use so many damn quick cuts they are normally wasted.

Everything else is pretty bad: we have the cinematography trope of "person is going crazy here's some quick cuts of blood", characters with odd motivations that don't make sense, subplots that are damn near irrelevant or exist to serve as red herrings.

By the end of the climax of the film I just couldn't care less what type of twist was coming.

This seemed like a pretty boiler plate slasher that tried and failed to be something more.

Horror movie of 2022. It is so heavy and boring that I could watch the movie in 3 days by taking a break every day. The audience already knows what will happen from the beginning. Even the acting was unprofessional. An ordinary movie about the cursed family, with a so-called mysterious murderer with an axe, and a leading role with strange facial expressions. It means there is fear when you show two drops of blood. In the movie, the family is so disconnected. Until the middle, I watched the father as a stepfather and the mother as an aunt. I have brainstormed for nothing. The kind that can be said to be disliked even if it is a daughter or a son.

There is no sex or nudity in the movie.

Not what I expected at all. This was startling. It had me jumping off my couch. But the scares were combined with strong performances from the entire cast. Kevin Bachar's script was unpredictable but effective at every turn. The story unfolded as sort of a slow burn and rose to a rousing crescendo. The riveting original score and sound design was chilling. I'm perplexed that Hollywood spends tens of millions to make tired old rehashed stories when modest budget films like this are out there. If Hollywood would only put their money behind something original like this. I think part two can't be far behind.

The Inhabitant performances are terrific. Odessa, Leslie, Dermot and even Lizzie Broadway in a support role are fantastic. And Mikhail the neighbor is very creepy. But the best might be the caretaker lady at the Borden house! Would have given it a 10 but I don't think Lizzie Borden had such striking looks. Still, the script is very smart with unpredictable twists and turns. And gave these actors so much subtext to work with. Very effective sound design throughout helps keep things straight. Loved the mystery moving inside and out of the main characters head. The gore is subtle, quick and effective.