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Occupant

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Written by Jonathan Jacobs

Our hipster protagonist Danny Hill (Van Hansis) committed a sin that yours truly can relate to; he majored in a useless Liberal Arts subject and has no chance whatsoever of obtaining a real job. While others are executives on Wall Street and the like, Danny is busy working in the home wares section of a less than stellar department store. His luck appears to be changing however. While on his way to identify the remains of his 82 year old grandmother (she dies of a massive coronary), Danny inadvertently makes a new friend. Sharleen Hunt (played by the daughter of Warner Bros. President Alan Horn) begins filming him as part of her online web blog. Using a sweet DSLR camera, Sharleen attempts to seduce him. It works, but more on that in a moment.

Danny identifies his grandmother's remains and then receives a visit from a slick lawyer and from a sinister doorman names Joe (Thorsten Kaye). Joe and the attorney instruct the impressionable young meanderer to remain for at least nine days in his grandmother's apartment. It is a rent-controlled building and if he can manage to stay put until a hearing is scheduled, he can live in relative luxury for just $600 a month.

With each passing day, Danny becomes less stable and more schizophrenic. No real cause for his condition is ever identified, but we are privy to his handy work. After strutting his stuff with Sharleen (a fine your filly to be sure), Danny begins his campaign of murdering house guests and his cat and shoving their remains through an unpatched hole in the apartment wall. Snore, zzzzz, oh forgive me I thought I was still watching this movie.

Occupant is a film that offers nothing in the way of impactful dialogue and it does not showcase the talents of its two young lead actors. Instead, the script takes us down a dark hallway where light is never shining and nothing is truly graspable. Put laconically and perhaps a little contemporarily, this movie (Occupant) sucks balls.