Tenants (2024)

Director: Jonathan Louis Lewis, Sean Mesler, Blake Reigle, Buz Wallick

Year: 2024

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Anthology

Plot:

Awaking in a strange apartment complex, a woman begins a search for her missing sister which soon causes her to come into contact with the residents who begin experiencing their own horrific incidents

Review:

This was a decent enough anthology with some likable enough stories. The stories are best when they’re kept simple and likable, whether it’s the opening one involving an actress trying to deal with a rash before a major audition, a lonely man unwilling to part with his deceased wife’s belongings, or the resident obsessed with a woman who won’t return his affections. These segments are the most appropriate for this type of storytelling providing enough to get a quick glimpse of the characters, what they did, and how to fix everything which usually goes along with some solid if unspectacular effects work. Other segments, including the bickering couple who are trying to overcome a miscarriage or the unkillable roommates who can’t stop attacking each other, provide wacky energy and tons of nice gore to give this some solid positives.

The main drawback is that the segments aren’t anything out of the ordinary and simply come off as par for the course in these types of stories. Almost every single setup here has a storyline that makes everything quite obvious at the very start.  Based on this type of setup and the length of the individual segments, there’s not much in the way of deviating from the signposted finale that resolves everything as there’s no opportunity for it to change it up. Moreover, the fact that so many of the encounters in the wraparound set up the stories which is one of the most confusing and pointless wraparounds in the genre by tying nothing together and feeling like a setup for a different movie altogether before having the main segments shoehorned into it. It’s a bit of a disappointment that this part comes off as weak as it does and lowers this one the most overall.

Overview: **.5/5

An underwhelming if still watchble anthology effort, there’s enough to like here that it comes off well enough although the big issues give it enough pause from what it could've been. Give this a watch if you're a hardcore fan of anthologies or curious about this kind of indie feature while those turned off by these factors might want to heed caution with this one.