The Tenant - Will's Review

The Tenant features a twist I've seen before, but which I don't really know what to call. It's no where near as common as "he was dead all along" or "it was all a dream", but it's common enough to be a cliché. It's a very 'twilight zone'esq and doesn't really make any linear sense; it's well suited to mind bending psychological movies (it was kinda-sorta used in the 1990 Bill Pullman movie - not to be confused with Peter Jackson's zombie movie), but it is not suited to The Tennant.

That said, I think it points to the movies biggest problem; this 2-hour journey into madness isn't close to as interesting as it thinks it it.

As aesthetically boring as it is emotionally unengaging this Roman Polanski snoozefest sleepwalks from one dull scene to the next.

Plot-wise, the film features Trelkovsky (Roman Polanski pulling double duty as star and director) moving into a new apartment after the previous tenant, Simone, commits suicide. Although he wasn't present for the jump, Trelkovsky did witness Simone's death later in the hospital. Between his new (fussy and intolerant) neighbours, and a series of strange occurrences, Trelkovsky slowly loses his mind.

On the occasions that strange things occur, some of them are brilliantly surreal and disturbing (Trelkovsky finds a deep hole in his wall at one point, with a human tooth in it), but for most of the movie they are far too few and far between... It takes fully 80 minutes before Trelkovsky's madness becomes fully evident to the viewer, and until that point more of his experiences can be described as annoying, rather than strange; rather than his world coming undone it simply seems as though he should be searching for a new apartment. It doesn't help that he's such a placid charter, being difficult to care about or identify with.

When Trelkovsky finally does come properly unhinged, I found that about half of the moments intended to be disturbing were instead amusing - an improvement over 'dull' I'll grant you, but still not what Polanski was aiming for.

In the end, I just found this movie to be far too much hard work, feeling like it lasted much longer than its two hour runtime.