13 Cameras (2016)
Premise: Claire and Ryan just moved to this pretty nice house! There’s a couple of problems, though: she’s pregnant (okay, this might not be a problem for certain people), the landlord’s described as smelling of “rotten mayonaise”, the husband’s cheating on Claire with his personal assistant, there’s a locked room/closet in the house that’s kinda creepy. Oh, and the house is full of hidden cameras that the creepy as hell landlord uses to perv on the couple, although I think there are more than thirteen.
Under 90 minutes? Yes, eightysomething.
Do they say the title? No, but, this movie has like three different titles depending on who you ask and they do say The Landlord, but not Slumlord or 13 Cameras. Consider this an interactive review: you choose if they do say the title or not
First thing I thought of:
Okay, more: Well, this got pretty bleak by the end! Let’s be honest, for a big part of the runtime this is mostly one of those thrillers you kinda watch while half taking a nap after lunch, what with the husband cheating on his wife and all that… buuuut there’s always this quiet threat of the landlord in his ultracreepy room with all the camera feeds. That plus, of course, I guess there’s some commentary about how we, the audience, are also being nosy and kind of creeping on the couple’s intimate moments, just like the bad guy except not really, but whatever. Anyhoo, the last stretch of the film was pretty creepy and I’ll say I just started this on a whim then ended up watching the whole thing, so I guess I had a nice time.
A simple way to improve it: it’s a pity that the landlord’s (let’s call it) “fragance” is only brought up on the initial scene and then once a while later, but there are plenty, plenty of opportunities to have someone go “huh, is it me or does it smell like [thing]?” with “thing” becoming a different but more disgusting thing everytime someone says that.
Trivia about the IMDb trivia:
Okay, very very light spoilers but this is really funny and I don’t think I’m the only one who will think it is, from the Goofs section where usually we get people saying that a glass of water was a tiny bit to the left during a one second cut, we get this:
Claire finally has enough of Ryan’s lying after finding out for sure that he has been cheating on her and kicks him out, leaving a bag of his clothing on the front lawn. After he goes in to lie to her face some more and then comes back out, he picks up the bag, rolls his eyes like the brat not getting his way that he is, and drops the bag back on the lawn and leaves. In the next scene showing the front of the house, the bag is gone. The next day when Claire steps outside, the bag is back with clothes strewn around.
So the goof is “the bag disappears for a scene, then comes back”. But then this person NEEDED to give you their opinion about the characters and plot and I don’t know, I think it is a very pure example of “look I just need to vent somewhere” anger after finishing a movie. I liked this, see.
