Tired of living with his painkiller-addicted mother, Justin Besler (Eric Conley) moves in with his father Kurt (David Rigg), a police detective. Despite his mother’s warnings that his father is bad news, Justin is eager to re-connect with his dad and get back into school. But Justin is surprised to find that his dad has renovated his house to include three apartments. The basement houses a garbage man who is also a frustrated actor/scriptwriter and his foreign wife. In one of the upstairs apartments lives two sisters – one is a borderline mental patient who is obsessed with fire, and the other is a massage therapist that will sleep with just about anything that walks through her door. The third apartment is home to an older man who is separated from his wife and a frequent customer to call girls.
Justin’s dad has been working on a bizarre murder case involving a strange cult known as the Black Circle, and suspects that they may be out to get him next. But when strange things start happening at the house, and a mysterious young woman is found dead, Justin enlists the help of his friends Scott and Rick to install video surveillance cameras in each of the apartments. The three men hope that by watching all of the residents they will be able to find out who the killer is. But what these amateur sleuths don’t know is that someone is watching them right back.
Content
This movie was a real trip to watch – and I mean that in a good way! It had a very Hitchcock feel that modern American audiences may take a little getting used to, but once you gear up for that type of pacing and style, you're in for a treat.
The whole theme of surveillance really preys on our innate fear of being watched. In fact, after finishing this movie, I took a roll of duct tape and covered up every mysterious hole that I found in my apartment walls – even those that I’d made myself!
The ending of this film walked a fine line between being predictable and unexpected. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Though I half suspected who the killer was, it still seemed to come as a bit of a surprise, because I didn’t really want that to be the case. In addition, the movie presented quite a plethora of suspects to choose from, so I found that I was constantly second-guessing my designated choice as to who the killer really was. Though some people may figure it out from the beginning, I think most audience members will be kept hanging until the end. My one complaint, however, was that the murder’s motivation in the end wasn’t made all that clear. A lot of people ended up dead, and though most of it was due to covering up the initial murder, I don’t think that the first one was explained quite as good as it could’ve been. Still, this could probably be fixed with a well-placed voice-over or a little re-editing.
My other problem, as far as content is concerned, are with a few hiccups in the logic and the overall smoothness of the film. There were a few points in which the action seemed a little choppy – that the movements of the characters from scene to scene wasn’t explained quite as well as it could’ve been. This could easily be fixed with a re-edit here and there, or by using music as a bridge.
