I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Movies So Bad They Make You Say "What In The Blazes Did I Just Watch?"

Occupant (2011) Straight To Cable

Before you start thinking ooh, I wonder why this movie was so bad let me save you the time - it is yet another 'move into a new place and weird things happen with a bad end'. Unfortunately I took waaay too many notes on this piece of trash, mostly because they separate the 'events' that take place by day and there's twelve of them. Sigh.

I'll break it down as quickly as possible: A man, Danny who lives in New York with a crummy job (and I'm assuming a crummy place to live) had a grandmother he barely knew, who dies in bed of a heart attack. As her surviving 'kin' he can get possession of her rent-controlled apartment. We're talking a super fancy place with living room, dining room, full kitchen, three bedrooms and three baths - for $675 per month. I don't even live in the city, just a small place and you can barely get a two bedroom cruddy apartment for that here. 

You're a real lawyer but your office is a coffee shop?

Apparently the real worth of apartment 1003 is $10,000 per month - I could see that in New York. By shady means he can have it, if he claims he was living with her and stays locked inside the apartment until his lawyer gets a court order saying that the existing lease can be transferred into his name. So he takes time off work and prepares to bunker in for a bit - if he leaves the apartment the landlord can change the locks and he's out of luck. A doorman named Joe (who refers to himself in the third person - annoying) tells him never to leave, that he will pick up groceries or whatever he needs. Danny has a cat, who hates the place so he keeps him in the carrier (nice - great quality of life there).

So now they break his 'ordeal' down by day. They call this a psychological thriller, which kind of tells you that whatever happens in the movie is Danny's problem and this is not a ghost movie. That kind of kills it as far as 'horror' goes. I was stupid enough to count by days but to be kind to you, my faithful readers, I'll just summarize...

(Singing) I just met you and this is crazy...

Paranoia has already set in, as he knows that the owner of the building will do anything to get him out of there. He's threatened, people show up at his door for things he didn't order, and anytime he steps out Joe seems to be there to order him back into the apartment. Joe even keeps his ATM card. WTH? I'm sorry, I don't care how nice your doorman is, he's not entitled to hold on to your money stupid.

Joe keep ATM card, okay? Joe also need SS #, PIN #...

Anyway, Danny thinks weird things are happening and as the days go on they get worse: A girl he briefly met and who shows up and sleeps with him disappears in the night. An exterminator who comes in (and sprays the cat, so I was rooting for him to die and he does) is found half in a huge hole that Danny had discovered in his grandmother's bedroom closet. Panicked Danny puts him in the stairwell. Of course the body is found, but cause of death is a heart attack and the man had blood pressure pills on him so, no danger to Danny.

But things get worse and Danny believes the owner is messing with his mind to get him out. His paranoia and weirdness just increase every day he's there. Now we're not talking about months folks - he's there for a grand total of TWELVE DAYS. What a wuss.

Can't finish painting his room - fully prepared for a ZA...

Finally he has Joe get him a bunch of hardware and he turns this beautiful place into a war zone and pretty much destroys the place. Fortunately for me, they show all this in fast forward (since I'm streaming this I can't just make it go faster unfortunately). We're talking chicken wire, barbed wire, nails in wood for weapons, knifes taped to sticks, the whole psycho ball of wax. His crowning achievement is a door he's removed and covered with hundreds of huge nails, which he somehow rigs to swing up to the ceiling, being held in place by a rope, just in case ??? attacks. There's never any sign of an attacker. He's filthy, he's eating cat food (Joe is sick and the replacement door man just keeps telling him to get out), he finds his cat baking in the oven (okay, ick) and he's a wild eyed massively paranoid idiot.

Too dumb to stay 12 days, smart enough to make this...

Danny looks around the place, remembering how beautiful it was before he got here, the people missing and dead, his cat, his grandmother, and at the end of his wits (not a long journey) he cuts the rope holding the door of nails up and it swings down, killing him. Of courses shortly after the lawyer shows up at his door with the court order stating the apartment is his. Duh. Someone must have smelled something because we next see police and crew staring at the place and Danny still swinging on the door...

A new family is moving into apartment 1003, no doubt paying the $10,000 per month - that must be nice. They have a son, approximately ten years old playing with the old piano still there - and finds hidden in it the video camera the missing girl was taping everything and everybody with. Now Danny had seen footage of her suddenly falling and being dragged (no sign of by who) so he had set up the thing to record whatever or whoever walked down the hall she was in. He found it the next day broken. But ten year olds are pretty electronics-savvy. He just takes the memory card out of the camera and puts it in his computer. We then see the hallway scene and Danny, walking very slowly down the hall (But jerkily, you know like they try to make ghosts or whatever?). It then shows him dragging the missing girl's body down the hall. Danny, besides being a paranoid idiot, was a sleepwalker and had apparently done everything to himself, including killing the girl and his own cat. MASSIVE DUH but thankfully the end.

The filmmakers claim that this was a psychological thriller about the value of patience and importance of human contact. I say it was a lesson of how to lose 90 minutes of your life thinking you were going to see something spooky or scary but no, it was just some idiot who couldn't stand to live in a beautiful place for twelve freaking days.