[jekylljuice]

The Tenant

A psychological thriller from Roman Polanski, concerning a hapless man (played by Mr. Polanski himself) who rents an apartment in Paris, the previous tenant of which has committed suicide, and becomes slowly convinced that his assorted neighbours are attempting to manipulate him into doing the same. It's an interesting premise, and although the resulting film is decent enough, I didn't quite feel that it ever really reached its full potential, and despite a handful of truly creepy and well-executed set-pieces, for a lot of the time it came across as being an uneasy mixture of wannabe Hitchcock and an extended episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery. The final few moments were particularly NG-esque, in that once the initial shock value had made its mark, they seemed a bit more silly than scary, and in the last ten minutes or so, the film suddenly seems to be in a quandary as to whether it actually wants us to empathise with its protagonist or not (in that regard, it certainly doesn't reach the same satisfying middle ground that Alfred did with his protagonist in Vertigo, and feels more messy and frustrating than effectively disconcerting), though I will at least credit Polanski for managing to add an additional twist to what had threatened to be a fairly predictable climax. All in all, it was more than worth the watch, although Chinatown is still by far the best that I've seen from this director.