The Inhabitant – Film Review

Like any other teenage girl, Tara is just surviving high school — yet her father and mother seem strangely distant. Amidst a nearby spree of gruesome ax murders, Tara has sightings of terrifying entities, forcing her to question her own sanity and shocking ancestry.

One thing’s for sure about Jerren Lauder‘s new horror-thriller The Inhabitant – it definitely takes some big swings. Pun intended. This is an extremely bold movie that takes its time leading up to its big, exciting moments in the third act but unfortunately, so much of that build-up is spent on mundane conversations between characters and not enough time actually fleshing them out.

Kevin Bachar‘s script simply doesn’t give enough material to our lead character Tara to make her feel like a fully realized person. We get little bits and pieces along the way, but by the time the film came to a close, it didn’t really feel as if I truly knew her despite having watched her for the entire film.

We know that Tara is a descendant of the infamous Lizzie Borden which is definitely a huge creative swing but it certainly worked in making her character even a little bit more interesting. Tara is sort of fascinated by this relative connection and it eventually starts to torment her in ways she could have never seen coming.

Bachar manages to write these Borden scenes superbly well, whereas he unfortunately stumbles in many others. The best aspect to this film is easily the last twenty minutes. Do things go a little off-the-rails and into the more unbelievable and goofy territory? Definitely. But you can tell that the filmmakers had the time of their life making it.

And as fun as the last little section of this film is, I couldn’t help but be irked by the fact that nearly this entire movie is spent building up to its ending instead of trying to tell a consistently gripping story all the way through. The second act makes an effort but it sadly focuses way too much on strange subplots.

All of the performances here are absolutely terrific including the lead performance from Odessa A’zion who recently starred in the remarkably creepy David Bruckner adaptation of Hellraiser, and just like in that film, she’s great here. Although I will say, the fact that she is supposed to be playing a teenager here is hilarious.

A’zion simply looks far too old to be playing someone in high school. Thankfully it’s not one of those highly distracting things that you’ll be thinking about the entire movie, but you probably will be wondering why they didn’t just cast somebody that looked a little more age appropriate.

There are small sections of The Inhabitant that manage to seriously impress with its off-the-wall craziness but when it comes to a character development standpoint, it’s a disappointingly weak film. If you’re on the prowl for a good film with Odessa A’zion, just watch Hellraiser instead.