Studio: Dark Sky Films
Director: David Marmor
Writer: David Marmor
Producer: Alok Mishra, Shane Vorster, Sam Sandweiss, Allard Cantor, Jarrod Murray, Nic Izzi, Jake Alden-Falconer
Stars: Nicole Brydon Bloom, Giles Matthey, Taylor Nichols, Alan Blumenfeld, Celeste Sully, Susan Davis, Clayton Hoff, Earnestine Phillips, Naomi Grossman
Review Score:
Summary:
A timid young woman tries starting a new life in Los Angeles only to discover the residents of her apartment building are hiding a shocking secret.
Review:
You can tell right away that something is off about Sarah’s new Hollywood apartment. Residents smile and wave as they pass one another at the mailboxes. Men and women of varying ages and ethnicities convene over coffee in the courtyard. These neighbors help carry laundry, host community barbecues, and regularly invite relative strangers to dinner.
I’ve had half a dozen different apartments since moving to Los Angeles. The reality of communal living out here involves looking down to avoid eye contact, waiting until someone passes by in the hallway before opening your door to go out, and an unspoken understanding that everyone keeps to themselves unless communication is absolutely necessary. Exceptions might be fire, an earthquake, or finding out whose car is blocking your assigned parking space again.
You know how nobody walks in L.A.? Nobody talks to each other either.
You can’t blame Sarah for not knowing better. She’s new to the City of Angels. Anxious to escape an overbearing father who cheated on her dying mother, Sarah went west to pursue a dream of becoming a costume designer. That’s as far as her courage extends. Meekness stops Sarah from standing up to the boss asking her to work unpaid overtime, and to the pharmacist refusing to refill a prescription. Her first glimmer of friendliness comes in the form of this unusual building where residents roll out a merry welcome wagon fit for Mayberry.
Kindliness comes with caveats. First, Sarah has to endure sleepless nights due to odd noises gurgling behind the walls. Then comes the threatening letter regarding the unauthorized housecat she secretly sneaked into the complex. Most unsettling of all, a shadowy shape secretly stalks Sarah. When it finally pounces, she takes her first step toward uncovering the truth about the community she now belongs to, whether she wants to remain there willingly or not.
“1BR’s” slow-to-melt setup charges a toll that viewers must pay with patience. Its deliberately bleak color palette claps at distracted eyes to stay focused. Those who oblige will find those modest fees to be a bargain. Once the film’s hypnotic spell completes its initial incantation, “1BR” also completes its application to join an exclusive shortlist of minimalist thrillers whose solid suspense becomes built on the backs of a low budget and unfamiliar cast, not in spite of them.
The setting’s monochromatic drabness accurately reflects the debilitating dullness of apartment living in Los Angeles. I’d swear the same developer built every complex erected between 1940 and 1980 from the same blocky blueprint of blandness. “1BR” might have even filmed in a former residence of mine. There’s no way to tell one apartment building from the other only by looking at them. It’s an eggshell mood meant to add “in” to “distinguishable,” in terms of residents as well as units. That theme is integral to “1BR’s” central premise of being lulled into compliant complacency.
“1BR” takes drops of color from its cast. Nicole Brydon Bloom’s blank-faced vacancy warns that she won’t be an enigmatically engaging personality. She’s not supposed to be. Bloom plays Sarah like a red-robed handmaid, one of society’s many unremarkable passersby whose malleable mind remains ripe for redirection. Hers is an intentionally plain performance, which sets up Sarah to undergo a believably transformative arc of both undeserved and “you brought this on yourself” suffering.
Longtime character actor Taylor Nichols works his own niche as Sarah’s building manager masking a second career as a cult leader. Taylor’s soft-spoken demeanor disarms Sarah and the audience alike, making his disturbing turn into tormenter all the more uncomfortable.
Susan Davis similarly stands out as elderly neighbor Edie Stanhope, a former B-movie star whose days of fame are long behind her. Davis belongs to a quietly quirky crew that includes Clayton Hoff as a one-eyed weirdo, Celeste Sully as Sarah’s crassly confident coworker, and Giles Matthey as a red herring love interest whose true nature trumps Nichols in terms of switch-flipping swings. Collective creepiness propels an uphill climb through mounting dread, with credit due to the cast for keeping “1BR” on that track.
For his first feature, writer/director David Marmor covers a lot of ground through subtext. Don’t let that turn you off. First and foremost, “1BR” functions as a strong psychological shocker. Some implications are open to interpretation, but this isn’t an ambiguously arty exercise in auteur indulgence.
Even with its emphasis on smoldering terror, “1BR” tells a frightening fable about loneliness, paranoia, independence, and identity. I’m not sure the film answers the question it asks with its warning about eyes turned into their phones instead of at human beings. The movie indirectly implies that the isolating reality I described earlier might be preferable to this alarming alternative. Maybe Marmor merely means to dig at self-help culture, specifically a certain philosophy popular with celebrities.
Almost echoing Sarah’s situation, it’s really up to you to decide how much the meaning matters, if at all. Taken only as entertainment, “1BR” still leaves you with unsettling suggestions akin to “The Invitation’s” ending (review here). Personally, I’m always intrigued by efficiently made, cult-connected chillers. If you are too, “1BR” will eerily entrance you.
Review Score: 85
If you want to see impossible amounts of blood explode crimson colors like the world’s worst version of a gender reveal, well, “Abigail” at least has that.