Movie Review: 1BR

1BR *** ½ / *****

Directed by: David Marmor.

Written by: David Marmor.

Starring: Naomi Grossman (Sarah), Giles Matthey (Brian), Andrea Gabriel (Cristina), Nicole Brydon Bloom (Sarah), Alan Blumenfeld (Gus), Taylor Nichols (Jerry), Celeste Sully (Lisa), Hailey Giles (Diane), Susan Davis (Miss Stanhope), Clayton Hoff (Lester), Jerry Ying (Officer Cho), Curtis Webster (Charles D. Ellerby), Earnestine Phillips (Ester).

 

Sarah really should be able to see something was wrong from the start. Afterall, she was able to find an apartment, in Los Angeles, that she could afford to rent without roommates, even though her only revenue is apparently a low-level job. Even if you take out the overly cheerful man who interviews her about the apartment, who asks strange questions like whether she has family in the area, or the strange guy with one eye who is always lurking, and wants you to read this book he has, or the love interest who is a little too perfect, a little too friendly, Sarah should have run far away from this apartment building.

 

It takes the first act of indie horror movie 1BR to really reveal what is going on here, but you know from the start something is wrong. And if you don’t think something is going to happen to Sarah’s cat – which she isn’t supposed to have in the apartment, then I don’t know what to do for you. It is to the films credit that despite us being ahead of the movie at first, that is able to twist and contort itself into something different – something we don’t quite see coming – even if the end of the movie calls to mind another recent indie horror film (I won’t reveal which one, since that may constitute a spoiler, but both movies end with the reveal of multiple lights of the same color).

 

Yet, 1BR is still an effective, creepy film that builds tension through the first act, ratchets it up in the second, and then gives you some cathartic, bloody relief in act three. Through it all, it’s anchored by a fine performance by Naomi Grossman, as Sarah. She is an every-millennial at the start of the movie, trying to make her way in the world, trying to get away from her family, start a job, find love, etc. And then as the mysteries of the film reveal itself – and the cult emerges – her performance becomes engagingly ambiguous. Does she become brainwashed? Is it an act? Is it a little of both?

 

Written and directed by David Marmor, 1BR is an effective little horror film. The film finds the horror in the everyday – it doesn’t rely on camera tricks, jump scares or gore for that tension. A large part of the creepiness is just how ordinary everything – and everyone – looks throughout the film. It twists little by little, to become more tense, more surreal, scarier. It is effective at each stage of its development, right up until the finale.