Review: The Lodger (2009)

Set in modern day Hollywood, with volatile, Ripper-obsessed detective Alfred Molina and his new partner Shane West (whom Molina treats like less than shit) investigating a series of murders of hookers, seemingly modelled on the Ripper murders of 1800s London, England. Molina is especially focussed on the case because it has implications on a previous case that saw Molina arrest a potentially innocent man (who was eventually convicted and executed). He’s also a workaholic with an estranged and bitter daughter (Rachel Leigh Cook, looking a lot older, hippier and blonde), and mentally unbalanced wife whom he has been asked not to visit in hospital. Meanwhile, a seemingly loving but unhappy couple (Donal Logue and Hope Davis) have just taken in a new lodger, the extremely handsome, but guarded and intensely private Simon Baker. Bored housewife Davis becomes intrigued and aroused by her handsome, but aloof boarder, whilst the audience is meant to be wondering just where the guy goes late at night? Philip Baker Hall plays another detective, and is barely made use of, for a man of his talents. However, having him and the horribly mannered Rebecca Pidgeon (as a profiler/criminal psychologist who, in a direct rip-off of “Psycho”, serves essentially the same function as the shrink at the end of that film) in the cast does give us the amusing privilege of having two Bakers, one Cook, and a Pidgeon, in the same film. Sorry, had to do it. I’ll behave now, I promise.

 

Beginning with the rather enjoyable 1927 Alfred Hitchcock silent version, this basic story (based on a 1913 novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes) has been told cinematically 5 times, either involving Ripper-style murders (as in the Hitchcock version), or even going further with its Ripper connections by having Jack the Ripper himself be the murderer in the story. This 2009 film from first-time writer-director David Ondaatje (and claiming to be based on Lowndes novel rather than the Hitchcock film, which is odd. I’d be crediting Hitchcock all over the place. Advertise it as Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Lodger”!) has most of the basic elements of the Hitchcock film (including a really annoying, Bernard Herrmann rip-off score), but takes the story into a wholly new direction (set in modern times, for a start), with each change/update worse than the last. This is one of the most wrong-headed, stupefying films I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s no wonder that I hadn’t even heard of its existence before watching it on cable.

 

At first glance it’s like two films in one, both horribly executed. The first, featuring the characters played by Baker (the only good thing in the film, by the way), Davis, and Logue at least seems to bear some faint resemblance to the Hitchcock film (especially with Baker and his mode of dress), but the police investigation side of things and all overt references to Jack the Ripper, are totally new, and really, really awful, despite Molina (looking more and more like Stay-Puft every day!) being a talented and extremely versatile character actor. I bought his character looking up Ripper content on Google (we all use it), but how is it even remotely possible that his rule-breaking character could so easily steal important files and evidence on the Ripper case? Totally ridiculous, and they should’ve just focused on the modern story and throw out the overt Jack the Ripper references. It’d still suck, but at least it wouldn’t seem like several films in one. Much as I liked Baker’s performance, trying to appropriate “The Lodger” to a modern, Hannibal Lecter-type film set in “L.A. Confidential” locations, and sprinkled with a little Jack the Ripper, just fails epically overall.

 

Hope Davis (a supremely overrated actress entirely lacking in warmth) is truly fatuous in a horribly written, heavy-handed role, whilst Rachel Leigh Cook is so bad (playing a thoroughly unreasonable bitchy person) one assumes that in all the years she’s been away from big-time movies, she certainly hasn’t spent that time honing her craft! Thank God the horribly mannered, weirdly accented Pidgeon (one of the worst-actresses of all-time in my opinion) is barely around. Her strange acting style and oddball vocal inflections are the bane of my very existence. No one in this film behaves even remotely realistically (Why is there a 1970s pimp in this film? WTF?), no one is even remotely sympathetic, and no one and nothing is terribly interesting. The film features really nice cinematography by David A. Armstrong, but the script is terrible (you’ll be three steps ahead of the film’s supposed big reveal, with the red herrings obviously just red herrings) and the direction is uber-pretentious, as if Ondaatje thinks he’s Wong Kar Wai or something (Earth to director: You’re not Wong Kar Wai. Mind you, I don’t really like Wong Kar Wai anyway, he’s pretentiously arty too). I mean, how many times did we really need to see Davis shot from above, lying on a bed? And I never want to see another time-lapse shot ever again! Everyone seems at the mercy of an arty filmmaker with his head up his own arse.

 

Never have I seen a film firing so many shots in so many directions and not hitting a damn thing. Forget being two films in one, the longer it goes on, it seems like several films in one, with each character getting their own story, none of which really work well together (West, for instance, seems to have come in from a more jocular, buddy movie). This is a bad, bad film, and a total artistic failure. Maybe it’s a good thing after all that Hitchcock’s name is nowhere to be seen in the credits.

 

Rating: D