Entrance

A crashingly dull portrait of early 20s urban ennui (set in Silverlake, no less) finally gives way to a home invasion screamfest with a tritely abrupt and emptily suggestive ending. The empathetically distanced approach to Suziey’s complete inability to engage with anything but her dog and, with rare attention, her hair, precludes any interest of character interaction or insight.

She does find herself listening a lot, unsure of the noises in her canyon-side renter as the soundtrack drops eerie hints of a prowler. But the audio is so full of distracting ambiance throughout that the sinister suggestions of these sounds is muted, emerging only blurrily from the carpet of noise. The camera work is little better, with horribly wandering (auto) focus and the typical jitters. Suziey’s dog disappears, people creep her out in the street, and she decides to move back home. Doesn’t matter where that is, or indeed why she came to LA in the first place. She could be any eastside hipster, see? They have feelings too; they just can’t articulate them.

Most unfortunately, the guests at Suziey’s leaving dinner are massacred by her stalker, whose entrance is by now long overdue. All traces of her personality are finally removed as she sees out the final fifteen minutes bound and gagged in a blood-stained party frock (nice green). Muffled screams feature heavily as she sees/discovers the murders of her successive friends. The violence is the most neatly handled part of the film, with inexplicit unpleasantness; the hipster touch of a record player upstairs is put to decent use to cover or reveal the sounds in the house, and the irony of thrift store clown paintings is made to look pretty insignificant. But it’s too little too late, and ends in a way which begs us to imagine horrors to come; trouble is, with such bland characterization (in the case of the stalker it’s non-existent) we're more inclined to respond (as many in my audience did) “you’ve got to be fucking kidding".

d/ed Dallas Richard Hallam, Patrick Horvath p Suziey Block, Karen Gorham, Dallas Richard Hallam, Patrick Horvath, Michelle Margolis sc Karen Gorham, Dallas Richard Hallam, Patrick Horvath, Michelle Margolis ph Dallas Richard Hallam cd Michelle Margolis cast Suziey Block, Karen Gorham, Florence Hartigan, Joshua Grote, Jonathan Margolis
(2011, USA, 83m)