Polanski should be proud!! This movie, sorta "The Tenant"-meets-"Rosemary's Baby" is a real hoot. Smartly avoiding camp elements, talented director James Merendino guides his cast through what seems to be a movie made for $50 with stylish flair and moments of both real humor and suspense. The main actor is pretty funny at conveying the all-too-real paranoia of being stalked by a Satan-worshipper in Los Angeles. A dream sequence is particularly Polanski-friendly, while an array of hipsters/bohos parade around to torment our hero to great avail. Horror it isn't, but as a mordantly funny black comedy on a shoestring budget -- "The Upstairs Neighbor" succeeds!!
3 Reviews
Still stored in someone's basement...
mike-214527 December 2006
I remember a lot of things about this film, and all the people that worked so hard at it! The unusual thing about this movie is the fascinating cast and crew that have one or two Kevin Bacon separations from quite a bit of new Hollywood history! Sbastian Gutierrez went on to write Gothika and Snakes on a Plane, and take a look at some of the other names! The most amazing thing about this film is that the producer still has the master in his basement in a box! I don't think there are any existing copies of this movie anywhere else, and that's what makes this interesting. I was on that set myself, and I was there when it was "screened" at Sundance, in a rented hotel ballroom with another film called "Cannibal- the Musical". Guess who those guys were. Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Gotta love film making!
The Best Indie Psychothriller You'll Never See
bob_meg6 December 2009
Warning: Spoilers
While James Merendino definitely mines the same isolationist/paranoiac territory Polanski so effectively excavated in "The Tenant" and preys upon our fears of occult rituals to good effect ala "Rosemary's Baby," don't think he has nothing new to bring to the table here.
Part of the brilliance of this film lies in the denseness of its low-fi, LA ersatz-bohemian scene. The acting is natural, the characters are utterly believable...there are no stand-out creeps among the cast that would lead you to believe something very strange is actually outside the mind of its protagonist, the neurotic, agoraphobic, insecure Eric, played with brilliant self-consumption and commitment by (now very successful in real-life) screenwriter Sebastian Guitierrez.
It was obvious the love and energy that went into this production. What it lacks in technical virtuosity and budget it more than makes up for in cahones and heart.
Eric's a down and out author of pulp novels who spends his days and nights squirreled inside the bottom floor of a two-unit walk-up in an anonymous concrete-infested burg of LA. It starts out as simple annoyance with the guy above...loud footsteps, moving furniture, the usual crap of apartment nightmares. Gradually though, things escalate to crank phone calls, wiretapping, and some seriously effed-up mental mind games that get Eric's already unstable, nervous personality and persecution complex working overtime.
Or is it? As the movie progresses, it gets harder and harder to differentiate the nightmares from the realities, the absurd from the possible. As Eric's mind continues to imprison him, his fatalistic fantasies get more grotesque, more vivid, and more disturbing. For a film made with chewing gum and redeemable soda cans, it can cast a spell on you unlike many movies with 100 times the budget.
That's where this powerful indie really succeeds. As I mentioned before, the other supporting performances by Rustam Branaman especially, as Eric's "nemesis," are so neutral and californiacated that they can be taken as either sly insinuation or laid-back boredom. Christina Fulton, has a hilarious turn as Eric's hyperactive beatnik girlfriend, who thinks everything's one big joke, and special props should go to Kane Picoy as perhaps the only character with his head on straight in the whole picture...and he's stoned half the time.
By turns clever, funny, inventively shot, cut with just the appropriate amount of jumpiness to throw you off kilter, and with a script that barely falters in pacing or story-drive, "The Upstairs Neighbor" deserves a spot in the history books for awesome bang-for-the-buck guerrilla film-making. With a dreamy, doomy score by trumpeter Bruce Langhorne, that recalls Mark Isham at his best and most ominous from "The Hitcher."
Isn't it time it was released on DVD in the USA so more people can experience the nightmare for themselves?
Part of the brilliance of this film lies in the denseness of its low-fi, LA ersatz-bohemian scene. The acting is natural, the characters are utterly believable...there are no stand-out creeps among the cast that would lead you to believe something very strange is actually outside the mind of its protagonist, the neurotic, agoraphobic, insecure Eric, played with brilliant self-consumption and commitment by (now very successful in real-life) screenwriter Sebastian Guitierrez.
It was obvious the love and energy that went into this production. What it lacks in technical virtuosity and budget it more than makes up for in cahones and heart.
Eric's a down and out author of pulp novels who spends his days and nights squirreled inside the bottom floor of a two-unit walk-up in an anonymous concrete-infested burg of LA. It starts out as simple annoyance with the guy above...loud footsteps, moving furniture, the usual crap of apartment nightmares. Gradually though, things escalate to crank phone calls, wiretapping, and some seriously effed-up mental mind games that get Eric's already unstable, nervous personality and persecution complex working overtime.
Or is it? As the movie progresses, it gets harder and harder to differentiate the nightmares from the realities, the absurd from the possible. As Eric's mind continues to imprison him, his fatalistic fantasies get more grotesque, more vivid, and more disturbing. For a film made with chewing gum and redeemable soda cans, it can cast a spell on you unlike many movies with 100 times the budget.
That's where this powerful indie really succeeds. As I mentioned before, the other supporting performances by Rustam Branaman especially, as Eric's "nemesis," are so neutral and californiacated that they can be taken as either sly insinuation or laid-back boredom. Christina Fulton, has a hilarious turn as Eric's hyperactive beatnik girlfriend, who thinks everything's one big joke, and special props should go to Kane Picoy as perhaps the only character with his head on straight in the whole picture...and he's stoned half the time.
By turns clever, funny, inventively shot, cut with just the appropriate amount of jumpiness to throw you off kilter, and with a script that barely falters in pacing or story-drive, "The Upstairs Neighbor" deserves a spot in the history books for awesome bang-for-the-buck guerrilla film-making. With a dreamy, doomy score by trumpeter Bruce Langhorne, that recalls Mark Isham at his best and most ominous from "The Hitcher."
Isn't it time it was released on DVD in the USA so more people can experience the nightmare for themselves?
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