The Resident (2011)
Starring: Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Christopher Lee, Lee Pace, Aunjanue Ellis
Directed by: Antti Jokinen
Rating: 
The Resident is a Hammer horror film starring Christopher Lee. So really it should have had me at hello. Until, well, it started.
Double Oscar winner Hilary Swank (what was she thinking?) plays ER doctor Juliet Devereux, who moves into a beautiful, huge and suspiciously cheap flat in Brooklyn at the behest of the suspiciously friendly landlord, Max.
We establish fairly early on in the movie that Juliet, the daughter of hippy parents, grew up without a TV. Which explains why she's clearly never seen a horror film before and simply doesn't know the rules. One rookie mistake after another sinks her deeper and deeper into creepy tenancy poo, as pervy Max spies on her, drugs her and murders her ex-boyfriend. (Sorry, was that a spoiler? Trust me, you'd have seen it coming anyway.)
Okay, so Juliet tries. Suspecting something funny may be going on, she installs CCTV in her flat… but fails to check the footage. Discovering an empty syringe cap on her bedroom floor, she orders herself a blood test (but doesn't check her CCTV)… but, on finding her system sluggish with Valium, she still returns to the flat. Finding psycho Max in her flat, she phones… her dead boyfriend.
Is this low-rent Single White Female supposed to make us feel scared? Cuz all it makes me feel is the need for a glass of wine – no Valium required.
As for Christopher Lee, well, clearly he's only there to lure mugs like me into the cinema. True, he adds some much needed class to the proceedings, but he only has about six lines, and frankly he looks so ancient that it seems inhumane to ask him to do more.
Definitely more Dracula AD 1972 than Dracula Prince of Darkness, if this is the best the newly resurrected Hammer studio can do, it'd be better off put out of its misery again, a stake through its heart. Let me in? Let me out, more like…