It’s Hammer Time!
A release from the revived (and revered) Hammer Films imprint, The Resident traces its ancestry from gothic mysteries, slasher cinema, erotic thrillers, and Hitchcock’s Psycho.
It’s even got Christopher Lee in a supporting role! Doesn’t get more Hammer than that.
Oscar winner Hilary Swank portrays Juliet, a frazzled ER doctor on the fly from a failed relationship. In search of new lodgings, she chances upon an old building with a spectacular view of the Brooklyn Bridge, owned by Max (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a charming landlord who resides on the premises with his ailing grandfather August (Christopher Lee).
When Juliet flirts with and kisses Max, it seems perfectly natural. He and Juliet are both attractive and successful people, their mutual interest is a given. She’s also lonely and drinks too much wine.
Finnish writer-director Antti Jokinen infuses the standard melodrama in The Resident, with a willingness to get uncomfortably close to his characters. Juliet isn’t sleeping well and can’t shake the feeling that someone is invading her space.
It’s not much of a mystery, as we learn that Max, the guy who owns the building, is indeed a highly disturbed individual, but perhaps not unreasonably so. It could be argued that Juliet’s reckless behavior with the heart of an unstable suitor is the cause of all the misery.
“You kissed me first,” he reminds her. And when Juliet has the nerve to get back together with her asshole ex, the wheels really come off.
Jokinen’s use of floating and flying camerawork is absorbing, making a mostly single-set apartment appear to be filled with more passages and secret doors than the Vatican.
The Resident is better than it has a right to be, largely thanks to Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s impressively layered performance as Max, a tortured soul who maybe just wanted to meet a nice girl. And a doctor to boot!
Morgan isn’t shy about delving the creepier depths of Max’s obsession, whether it’s licking Juliet’s hand from beneath her bed while she sleeps, or having a little cuddle party with her clothes, he’s clearly an actor unafraid of committing to a role.
Anyone expecting an arrogant and antagonistic villain in the vein of The Walking Dead’s Negan will, I thnk, be surprised by Morgan’s ability to generate menace, revulsion, and sympathy—right up until the bloody nail-gun finale.
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