i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

This thin story goes nowhere other films haven't gone before with more excitement and meaning or at least shocks. The moody first 20 minutes quickly turn into a slog after a "twist" that any brief description of the film will spoil before you watch it anyway.Like all of Hammer films recent (rebirth films--and much of their overall output and reputation) this is handsomely made film. Though most of it takes place on New Mexico shot interior sets it all looks seamlessly like NYC and features good real NYC exterior scenes. But so what? Jeffrey Dean Morgan proves that he has limits to what he can do here. I like the guy as a performer and he usually makes anything he is in better than it was before he arrived. Take the way he helped the second season of EXTANT TV series for example. But his acting isn't up to what's required here and his general vibe is all wrong. He is totally miscast here and can't overcome that. He seems too natural confident and relaxed to be the psychopathic obsessive loner we are supposed to believe him to be. The more they put him in situations that are to show how creepy his is the more the problem becomes and the situations become borderline silly.Swank is equally miscast really, not being willing to do any nudity--which a film that partly is supposed to be about sexuality its repression and obsession--requires, and she never seems emotionally or physically vulnerable. Her talking about being exhausted or repressed just seems like dialogue, not reflected in how she looks or acts.Why she'd be interested in being in a film like this is a bit of a puzzle. Being the center of almost every shot and probably being the largest single dollar amount in the budget would be appealing, sure.The whole thing finally turns into protracted and not well done slasher chase scene inside the apartment's confined inner recesses.Though the same director went on to do PURGE--leading to a successful theatrical run of movies--he does little here to show he has much interest in the genre. Only the classy production values separate this from a Lifetime movie and the fact that it barely got released is no surprise. This would be a not--too--good episode of Hammer's own previous television series in the 80's and it's just not, as made, a feature or worth feature length.Music score is useless adds nothing to the characters or supposed scares. Mostly the middle hour of the film is dull and predictable.Christopher Lee plays a part like his friend Peter Cushing did or might have were he still alive. That part is the old man. Really that's it, that's his role. He seems a little threatening....once.Lee plays it with a vacant, almost lost, old man look--that is not how he, himself looked at the time--so it is a performance and his final scene is well done physically--as Lee was always among other things a physical actor--even in a role here that requires mostly no movement. But having him in the movie and doing as little as they do here shows another level of script and directing disinterest. Especially to have him "return" to Hammer to make a film they basically do as little as possible with him. Still fans will see the potential the filmmakers didn't.The whole thing hardly seems worth the trouble of being made or watched.

I'm quite surprised by the general poor reviews here. Must be me but I found The Resident really tense, particularly towards the end, and it had me on the edge of my seat. Fine performances from Hilary Swank and Jeffrey Dean Morgan with a small cameo from the great Christopher Lee as Morgan's spooky grandpa. Swank is a surgeon by profession and moves into a new flat owned by Morgan and a relationship gradually starts to develop, however she's on the rebound from the man she really loves, so it can only really be platonic with Morgan. This brings out the worst in this disturbed character, who at first seems charm itself, but that's all I can say without spoiling the plot. I really loved this movie and there are quite a few shocks, unless of course you're used to the constant bombardment of CGI from teen movies like the dreadful Transformers, in which case it's probably tame to you. It reminded me a lot of Audrey Hepburn's brilliant thriller Wait Until Dark from many years ago.

Usually, I don't bother reviewing something I dislike, preferring to congratulate achievement rather than to condemn ineptitude. But ineptitude runs rampant here, especially given the talent. I've rated it 2 because if nothing else (and there is nothing else), it does have some very fine camera-work and effective enough music. The problem is that there is really no story in this film. From the time Swank takes her $3,800 Brooklyn apartment, we know she's in some kind of danger. From 15 minutes later on, we know exactly what that danger consists of, and who poses it to her. After that, it is nothing but a long series of voyeuristic observations and meanderings through keyholes, panels, drains - you name it, it works for observability - and that's it. We never learn anything about any of the characters beyond what they do for a living and why Swank has left her husband. We never learn anything about what made the madman who owns the building into a madman. We never learn anything about his grandfather, who brought him up, except that Gramps doesn't seem to like him too much. When Madman Landlord knocks off Grandpa, we have no idea why he does so, nor what he does for the rest of the story with the body. When Swank, in mortal danger (mostly of understanding the plot) hardly registers the sight of her dead husband literally hanging around, it's hard to believe that she ever loved him, let alone still does. Swank is shown as an apparently important doctor at her hospital, yet she seems to just drop in and out of it at will, and go directly from heroically saving lives to complaining to a colleague about her married life. Worse, and this is really worse, from the time she enters the new apartment for the first time, about 85% of the rest of the film takes place in that apartment, yet the viewer has absolutely no idea what that apartment looks like. Despite the fact that she and her separated husband seem truly astonished that she can find such a wonderful and large apartment for $3,800 a month, to me (a Brooklyn resident), it looks like little more than a dilapidated and pretty small apartment, possessing nothing to sell it except a couple of window views of the outer world. The camera work is so intensely close up and restrictive that one never gets any sense of proportion as to what the total apartment looks like, one room from another, the true size of the place, what room leads to the next, etc., etc. There is not one regularly lighted scene at any time in the apartment. Does Swank not have light bulbs or something with which to open the curtains on her windows? All is murk! When the final, rather gargantuan battle between Swank and Morgan arrives (it's like a knives, axes, needles and staple gun version of the great fight in 1952's SCARAMOUCHE, but even the candlelit opera house that one takes place in has a hundred times the visual clarity of anything seen in RESIDENT, but at least this is where the excellent camera-work mostly comes in), most of the time I can't keep track of where they are fighting it or where Swank is headed, so little definition has been given to either the apartment or the rest of the building up to that point. All the outdoor scenes (little more than for Swank's jogging moments) are filmed on location in Brooklyn, but all the interiors seem to have been filmed in New Mexico - and in a rather minuscule part of New Mexico at that - like a darkened sound stage. Given that such excellent actors as Swank, Morgan, Lee and Pace have nothing to act except (in order) hysteria, madness, old age and blandness, it's no wonder they can't register much, especially as the screenplay is of no help to anybody and the storyline remains almost totally without background. I actually felt cheated to see two-time Academy Award winner Swank in such a mishmash (and she's responsible for it, since she produced it; are good roles that hard to find with two Oscars on the shelf?), and to see Christopher Lee's name added to the cast obviously to sell the film to people like myself, since he doesn't have ten lines to speak in the entire film and cannot be on the screen for a grand total of more than about three minutes. It's the kind of film that asks the question, Why was this made?, and then proceeds not to be able to answer it.

Given the basic plot description and the choice of lead actress Hillary Swank, I normally never would have bothered to see "The Resident", but admittedly two little elements intrigued me. Number one: this is supposed to be – along with "Let Me In" and "Wake Wood" - the comeback movie of the legendary British production studios Hammer and, number two, it stars the legendary Hammer horror icon Christopher Lee. From the early fifties until the late seventies, Hammer Studios pretty much embodied the genre of horror and almost single-handedly skyrocketed the popularity of classic monster stories (like "Dracula", "Frankenstein" and "The Mummy") amongst wide and versatile audiences. A still very young Christopher Lee debuted as multiple (often silent) creatures in the 50's, starred in numerous other and more significant glory roles throughout the 60's and 70's and owes a lot of his success to Hammer. The production company faded out in the early 80's but was revived – in true Baron Frankenstein style – in 2010. Obviously I never expected (or even hoped) a genuine reincarnation of the "old" Hammer traditions (since they specialized in Victorian horror tales) but I nevertheless did expect more qualitative horror material than this. The aforementioned "Let Me In" and particularly "Wake Wood" are still reasonably horrific and original tales, but "The Resident" is a very dull and derivative little thriller like there are thirteen in a dozen being unleashed on cable television every week. After having left her unfaithful boyfriend, hard-working hospital doctor Juliet Devereau (Swank) seeks a new apartment and falls head over heels in love with a large and beautiful Brooklyn flat that is astonishingly cheap considering its shape and location! Perhaps it's so cheap because Max the landlord – Jeffrey Dean Morgan – is an obsessive pervert that has been stalking Juliet for a while already and specifically designed the place to observe her through several little peepholes. When the indecisive Swank then gives him false romantic hopes, Max goes bonkers even more. "The Resident" is intolerably slow and the weak scenario stupidly reveals all the plot-twists and mysteries before the film is even halfway. There are a couple of realistic and fairly uncomfortable sequences (for example the toothbrush moment and the finger-licking), but they would have been much scarier if the main characters weren't so bland. Jeffrey Dean Morgan gives a chilling performance, but his madman characters lacks depth and/or a proper background. And even though I'm personally not a big fan of Hillary Swank, I reckon her performance is actually much better than the script foresaw. The respectable Christopher Lee is always a pleasure to watch, but his role is quite irrelevant and sad. The climax is abrupt and rough, in sheer contrast to the previous rest of the film. "The Resident" is merely a forgettable thriller with a few nice touches and overall very good camera-work, but not something I want to link to Hammer.