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dger 2009 (DVDRip)

Posted by yeasin

The modern serial killer thriller, as established in 1991 by Jonathan Demme's expert The Silence of the Lambs and then further in 1995 by David Fincher's superb Se7en, has deteriorated into an uninventive collection of familiar tricks, tropes and tiresomely murky cinematography. If regurgitation has become the genre's guiding principle, there are far worse sources to plagiarize than the canon of Alfred Hitchcock, which is more or less what first-time writer-director David Ondaatje does with The Lodger, a modern update of the 1913 Marie Belloc Lowndes-penned mystery that was the basis for Hitch's 1927 silent film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. Predictably, the results aren't nearly as inspired when viewed in direct comparison. Worse still, they're also not inspired when viewed through the prism of the past two decades' worth of likeminded cinema (and the network-TV behemoth C.S.I.). Stolidly including every cliché in sight while failing to keep things tense or intriguing, it's a film that deviates not an inch from its rickety template and, consequently, disallows its sturdy cast from maneuvering in ways that might bring some novelty to the cat-and-mouse tale.

In West Hollywood, detective Chandler Manning (Alfred Molina) has his professional reputation rocked when the murder of a prostitute implies that Manning may have convicted, and thus doomed to the death penalty, an innocent man seven years earlier. This further complicates his stressed state of mind, which is already coping with an estranged daughter (Rachael Leigh Cook) and a suicidal wife recently committed to the loony bin. As dead hookers start piling up, it becomes apparent that the fiend is duplicating the crimes of Jack the Ripper, which it turns out makes sense because West Hollywood is the exact same size as Ripper's killing fields, Whitechapel, London, and even boasts a Whitechapel Street. Paired with rookie cop Street Wilkenson (Shane West), who takes the brunt of Manning's homophobic jabs, and aided by his Ripper expertise and general disregard for by-the-books conduct, the detective sets out to stop the bloody rampage through the use of investigative and forensic techniques that seemed rote a decade ago. All the while, the film repeatedly cuts back to the related saga of Ellen (Hope Davis), the mentally unstable wife of a security guard (Donal Logue), who takes in a lodger (Simon Baker) whose secretiveness strenuously suggests that he might be the sought-after villain.

Ondaatje eventually sprinkles suspicion about the killer's identity onto three separate characters in a vain attempt to keep things taut, though at least up until the film's perplexing tacked-on finale, there's little question about the reality of the situation. The idea that Manning himself might, in fact, be behind the recent spate of slayings comes off as about as realistic as his sole conversation with his institutionalized wife, which takes three seconds to succumb to TV movie-style wailing hysterics. As for Ellen and her new tenant, let's just say their relationship - which quickly develops a not-so-subtle strain of sexual energy - is so obviously not what it initially seems that it's difficult to become invested in the raft of plot twists and turns that come to dominate the latter half. Not helping matters, also, is Ondaatje's direction, which - perhaps in an ill-advised, unsuccessful attempt to mimic Hitchcock's own use of expressionistic visuals for his adaptation - incessantly indulges in flourishes (slow-motion set to opera, flickering effects and overlapping images, time-lapse shots of L.A. clouds and nighttime traffic) that give off the impression that the story's conventionality is in desperate need of gussying-up.

With little originality or urgency, The Lodger proceeds with perfunctory blandness, in the process dampening down its stars' performances. Molina huffs and puffs and rampages about like every other on-screen cop driven to solve a case despite bureaucratic interference, but never seems convinced that he's playing anything more than a frayed archetype. Still, at least he's given something to do, which can't be said of Davis, as Ellen is left to wander around her home and adjoining lodger-occupied bungalow with a mixture of quivering nervousness and anxious derangement, both expressions doing little more than bluntly telegraph the climactic revelations to come. Unfortunately, even at its twisty apex, Ondaatje's debut proves more interested in replication (Rebecca Pidgeon's final psychological evaluation is ripped straight from Psycho) rather than making a lick of sense, so that the cliffhanger upon which The Lodger concludes feels like simply the final example of this forgettable thriller's dedication, above all else, to dutiful conformity.