Now available on DVD
Cast:
Randy Molnar as Dr. Newman
Georgia Chris as Olivia
Sylvia Boykin as Ms. Tinsley
Aerica DâAmaro as Liz
J. LaRose as Jeff
Bill Cobbs as Jack Rymer
Justin Smith as Rob
Directed by Ric La Monte
Review:
The Tenant is a film that tries hard to do something different a mass amount of clichés, but it can’t ever seem to escape into something better or original or even scary.
The film tries to be one part Frankenstein, one part It’s Alive and, toward the end, a slasher. Unfortunately, this identity crisis is a big part of the problem, as it never comes together to form a cohesive plot. Instead, it is like three movies that have been crammed into a complete mess of a movie.
A driven, strange-looking doctor is pulling out all of the stops to find a cure to all the diseases in the world through genetic research. Unfortunately, he tends to ignore his hot wife (way too hot for this guy), even when she gets pregnant with twins. At the end of his rope to find this cure, he has a key but in order to make it happen he has to experiment on a living person. He gets some help from his diabolical nurse who injects his pregnant wife without him knowing it.
Of course, things donât go according to plan. The first little girl his wife gives birth to comes out alright and seems to be healthy. The second child, not so much. He comes out more like a mutant and when this kid grows up, he preys on teenagers who invade his house.
This becomes an issue when a van full of people breaks down in front of the old asylum where the mutant killing machine resides. When they take shelter in the location, it turns into the old adage of a “bunch of unlucky people trying to escape a brutal killer moving from one room to the next with the killer dispatching them one by one.” Sigh.
The really bad (and boring) part is that it took us two-thirds of The Tenant to get to the point where this mutant killer was actually doing anything (except in the beginning where he takes out a young couple looking to get it on). And 45 minutes of back story is way too much for a film that is struggling with its identity. We literally know nothing about the people that are trying to escape this monster as they have spent the majority of the film detailing the story about the doctor, the nurse and the pregnant wife.
The other laughable bit is that the people who are being hunted have no sense of emergency or dread. They see one of their friends get ripped apart and calmly discuss if everyone else is okay. And then out of the blue, one of the people in the van just happens to be the sister of the deformed mutant killing everyone. Hey, thatâs an impressive coincidence. Oh, and she just happens to know all about the asylum they wandered into. Maybe that might have been a good bit of information to tell your friends BEFORE GOING INTO THE ASYLUM.
The one redeeming quality is the production values of the film are very good. The sets are well done, the special effects are pretty good and the overall feel of the film is that of a high quality production. It is just too bad that the rest of the film is bunk.
