by Daniel Erenberg
The Lodger was released in theaters on January 23rd. It comes out on DVD on February 10th. This is not usually a good sign for a film, but it seemed like The Lodger might have been different. It is billed as an homage to Alfred Hitchcock, complete with many of Hitchcock’s signature shots and set-ups, and it boasts a truly impressive cast, which includes interesting actors like Alfred Molina, Hope Davis, Donal Logue and TV’s The Mentalist, Simon Baker, in the title role. The film is a modern take on film noir, about a killer copycatting the murders of Jack the Ripper. This all sounds like it could have come together. It sounds like it could have been an interesting film.
The Lodger is not an interesting film. It’s an impossibly bad film, mesmerizing in its lack of anything resembling competence from anyone behind the scenes. The excellent cast looks embarrassed reading the “hard-boiled” dialogue, and no one comes across well. David Ondaatje is the writer/director. David Ondaatje. David Ondaatje. You’d do well by yourself to remember this name. If you see it poking out anywhere in the credits of any film, do not watch that film. This man is that untalented. If I saw another overhead, time-lapsed shot of LA, with the clouds moving very quickly indeed, my head was going to explode. Ditto slow motion shots of a killer stalking a prostitute set to opera. Ditto artificially staged crime-scene sequences that would make the writers of even the worst CBS forensics procedural (Cold Case?) bust their ribs laughing.
That being said, it was an entertaining filmgoing experience in that there were a ton of unintentional laughs, Hope Davis was looking mad fine and it provided wonderful and hysterical conversation for the rest of the night. “Wow,” I said upon leaving. And that was all I could say for a few minutes. This, by the way, was after the awful ending which was like a shot-for-shot remake of the shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, followed by an epilogue straight out of a nineties UPN revival episode of The Twilight Zone.
I’ll be showing this dreck to drunken friends for years to make them laugh. Just like The Fog, House of Wax and Rob Zombie’s Halloween. But you know. It’s not quite as good.
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January 26, 2009 at 7:42pm ∞
