Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I will say that The Lodger kept my attention to the very end and that I was pleasantly surprised by the ending. But most of the story line in the middle was your typical old crime mystery.Simon Baker plays a mysterious and quirky good looking stranger who knocks on Hope Davis's door in answer to an add for a ROOM FOR RENT sign. Of course Hope Davis takes Simon's cash advance of three months rent and accepts the good lucking Simon Baker as her new tenant.The mutilated murders of streetwalkers start appearing in a similar fashion of the murders that took place seven years earlier. These previous murders were thought to have ended when Detective Chandler Manning played by Alfred Molina arrested the presumed guilty suspect that was put to death seven years earlier. Now the movie viewers realize that Detective Chandler (Alfred Molina) put away the wrong guy for the crimes.So the viewers have a few suspects to consider who may be committing these recent murders of streetwalkers that appear to be duplicating the documented murders of the notorious Jack the Ripper. I was not impressed with Alfred Molina's performance as the lead detective Chandler Manning. What kept my interest in the film was the interactions between the lonely and disturbed performance of the landlord played by Hope Davis and her new lodger played quite well by Simon Baker.Of course no suspense film is complete unless the lead detective is suspended from his position in the biggest case in Los Angeles history for his inability to solve the case. Will he be vindicated? Well for me I just did not feel Alfred Molina was convincing enough as the dejected lead detective, whose daughter and wife were also turning their back on their father and husband respectively.Without spoiling the ending I will say that I found the ending to have a few twists in it that I expected and some twists that I was not expecting. I rated the film a 5 out of 10 because the plot was generally predictable and Alfred Molina's performance as the lead detective a bit disappointing. If not for a strong performance by Hope Davis and Simon Baker the film would have my thumbs down. I give THE LODGER one thumb UP!

Here's the opening scene. The camera moves slowly, at a stroller's pace, along a Los Angeles sidewalk. It encounters a gate with a "Room For Rent" sign. The camera glides onto the pathway between the untended gardens of weeds towards what passes in Los Angeles for an ominous house. Then it drops to a close up of a newspaper near the doorstep.Is this a point-of-view shot, with the camera showing us what the person is seeing? No. A hand reaches down, picks up the newspaper, and a blond housewife (Davis) strolls back through the door.What it is, boys and girls, is an imitation of one of Hitchcock's swooping introductions, ripped off shamelessly from "Psycho" and "Frenzy", and that newspaper on which so much attention is lavished and which was of significance in "Psycho" plays no further part in the plot.Other Hitchcock ripoffs, just from the opening few minutes: (1) The shots inside the house show the blond's mean-looking, greasy-haired, scowling husband (Logue) eating his breakfast. The camera clearly shows us the slice of ham, the scrambled eggs, the two slices of toast, which the ugly husband is buttering wordlessly. Meanwhile the TV in the background is telling us about the murder of a prostitute. It all mixes food, sex, and murder, as so many Hitchcock movies did, only this is without taste or humor. (2) The rather drably groomed blond wife is watching her husband slice away at his food. She holds an abnormally large glass of orange juice. Why? So she can lift it and drink out of it and we can see the distorted image of hubby through the bottom of the glass, just as in Hitchcock's "Spellbound." (3) The TV in the background carries on about the murder. The sound is blurred except for one word, repeated several times, which leaps out loudly at the view -- "knife." Lifted in its entirety from Hitchcock's first talkie, "Blackmail." There isn't space enough to go on with this, nor any impulse to do so. I'd rather examine the contents of a spitoon. But let me get a few other annoyances out of the way. Periodically, for no discernible reason, the director shoots scenes in fast motion. Accelerated motion has its place. It was used to good symbolic effect in movies like "Koyaanisqatsi" and even the otherwise dreary "The Bonfire of the Vanities." Here it's used pointlessly. Every shot of freeway traffic shows us vehicles speedily zipping by instead of crawling along in a state of fury. There are two scenes of Hope Davis doing housework -- speeded up. (A woman doing HOUSEWORK is speeded up! And this is not a comedy!) Another scene has the camera strapped to Davis's chest, a device which tends to keep the subject at the same distance from the camera and relatively stable in image, while her environment revolves in a jarring manner around her. Why? Well, it's one of those mysteries that must remain unsolved, like the Jack the Ripper murders.Some of those techniques are newly established clichés but many of the old ones appear here as well, coated with verdigris. A man sits at his desk in silence. A hand reaches in from out of frame and grabs his shoulder, accompanied by a loud sting on the sound track -- but it's just a friend, who chuckles at having scared his buddy. A pimp is called in for questioning and he wears the feathers and furs common to pimps in 1970s movies. But why go on? Alfred Molina has a great face, flabby and imposing. Even his name is impressive; in Spanish it means "great big mill." He's the overzealous policeman on whom suspicion falls. That face belongs on a baritone in an Italian opera. Rachael Leigh Cook's name is listed way up there in the credits but she has little screen time. The chief female figure is that blond housewife played by Hope Davis and she doesn't do badly by the part, as long as it call for a quiet intensity, whether the intensity stems from dissatisfaction with her family or horniness.Did I mention that this is adapted from a book and is the fourth or fifth remake of the story? All the preceding attempts are better than this one, although this one at least spares us two irritations -- the wobbling camera and the close ups of the screaming victims as the knife renders their flesh.The ending tries to link the Ripper murders to the Sunset murders of whores but makes no sense whatever. The dark, pretty, talented, intelligent Rebecca Pidgeon is wasted as an FBI agent forced to spout psychobabble that turns out to be one hundred percent wrong. (I speak to you as your psychologist. That will be ten cents.) Boy, is this tiresome.

Marie Belloc's novel, serves once again as the basis of this 2009 treatment that doesn't go anywhere. Partly, the fault lies with the treatment of its well intentioned writer/director, David Ondaatje. His inexperience, perhaps, was the factor that this movie probably went into DVD right away, as it appears the commercial run didn't go anywhere since it must have come and gone without much publicity, or word of mouth.The locale of the story has been changed from London to a rainy Los Angeles, seen mostly at night. The serial killer who is killing prostitutes in a seedy part of town is following in the steps of Jack the Ripper, the famed English killer. This sick man finds digs in what appears to be an uninhabited garage in the back of a house that has seen better days. The mysterious lodger catches the landlady's fancy; this woman is stuck in a bad marriage. She looks as though she is not dealing with reality, but the attraction the new renter has upon her proves to be too much.When the dead women begin to surface, detective Chandler Manning has to face guilty feelings because the present killer has the same M.O. as the man he has sent to the electric chair a short time before. Manning has a suspicion the murders follow the same logic as the ones committed almost a century ago in London. His obsession gets the best of him, making him lose perspective.The picture fails because the way Mr. Ondaatje presents the story. There is no suspense in most of the action. If the viewer happens to be a fan of the genre, he would notice things that will spoil the fun for him. The director doesn't create enough atmosphere to do justice to what he tried to do.The talented cast is totally wasted. Alfred Molina and Hope Davis are excellent actors, but the way they were asked to portray their characters is not believable. For one, the detective of Mr. Molina, or the vapid landlady of Ms. Davis, will not add anything to their brilliant careers.

Based off the same book as Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 adaptation, this version of 'The Lodger' yields a surprisingly strong cast in Alfred Molina, Rachel Leigh Cook, Philip Baker Hall, Donald Logue, Simon Baker, and Hope Davis. It tells the tale of a not-so-happy couple that rents out a room to a mysterious young man and begin to discover deeper secrets about him. . . like that he may be involved in a series of local murders.When I first saw the IMDb page for this film, I was stunned that such a strong cast and solid idea didn't make it very far into theatres, especially with as successful as horror has been so far this year. Unfortunately, low-budget horror re-adaptations tend to have some pretty bad stigmas associated with them ('I Am Omega,' 'The Raven'). . . because they're usually pretty terrible. It's even more difficult to follow in the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Nevertheless, feature-rookie David Ondaatje ignored those dangers and went along with the film anyway. I'm pretty glad he did. This adaptation of 'The Lodger,' while it doesn't compare to Hitchcock's in the least, is very entertaining and keeps a solid amount of mystery throughout. It's cheap and it shows, yes, but the great cast, who does a reasonable job, does manage to raise it above the level of low-grade, straight-to-video horrors (like the above mentioned films) to, at least, a respectable and worthy quality. Ondaatje's direction is apt enough, though David A. Armstrong's cinematography and William Flicker's editing do seriously ruin the mood sometimes with random shakicam and MTV-style cuts. The re-adapted script flows well, but the dialogue is a bit awkward sometimes and really needed another edit. Another problem with the script is the overly forceful attempts at creating red herrings. I love mystery as much as the next guy (actually, moreso), but when you're trying to shove false leads down the viewers' throats, you're going to be making it less mysterious and more annoying. Also, it was pretty hilarious that they would send 55-year-old Alfred Molina, who is at least 100 pounds overweight, running after a a murderer instead of 30-year-old Shane West, who's in perfect shape. So logical. Anyway. . . if you're looking for an entertaining mystery-thriller, or if you're a big fan of Jack the Ripper (like me, which is why I at least found it interesting) or previous adaptations of 'The Lodger,' give this one a look. It's not great, but it's an okay time-passer.Final Verdict: 6/10.-AP3-