Dir. Jonathan Louis Lewis, Sean Mesler, Blake Reigle, and Buz Wallick (2024)
A woman wakes up in an unfamiliar apartment complex, where every resident has a story.
Anthology films are perfect for the Halloween season. As I've said here before, the tradition of telling scary stories around the campfire is the very essence of horror, and translating that into the screen through the use of an anthology is perhaps the most fitting and appropriate method to actually make a horror film. That doesn't always mean they're great movies, of course, just that the framework allows for greatness in a way that a movie, in and of itself, may not. Today's film, the new indie anthology Tenants, is an excellent example of what you can do with a few good stories and some great performances, delivering one of the better anthologies in recent memory.
Joni (Mary O'Neil) awakens from a fleshly sack in the parking garage of an apartment complex. She doesn't know where she is, but she knows that she has to find the resident within the complex that just so happens to share all of her physical characteristics. Along the way, she encounters various people who live in the complex, each with their own story and all of them not ideal. There's the child actress who is seeking to reboot her career but comes down with a skin rash right before her big audition and finds a home remedy to cure it. The recent widower whose grief has manifested as a hoarding disorder, while something lurks within the trash. Through it all is the story of a woman who wants to reconnect with her sister, though there's certainly a lot more to it than that.
Tenants is a good indie anthology with a few excellent stories and some great performances. I was expecting the scares, but I was definitely not expecting the emotional impact of a lot of these shorts. There's so much of this film that is about acceptance and loss, be it of a spouse, of a child, or even the loss of one's sense of self. The individual stories are excellent, and while they vary greatly in format (though not thematically), every short is excellent in quality. The wraparound, which comes together greatly in the end despite not making a whole lot of sense until then, is a great opening and closure to the film, exactly what's needed to make a good anthology.
Standouts in the cast are Tara Erickson as Sara, whose heartfelt portrayal of a grieving mother is outstanding, and Clarke Wolfe and Fayna Sanchez
as Belinda and Gracie respectively, a pair of odd couple roommates whose different styles massively conflict with each other. Wolfe especially really handles the short form well, as we've discussed previously with her self-directed short A Shining Example. She's a star, and I'd love to see more from her in the future (and we even got a chance to chat with her about her previous short!) Their short was easily the most entertaining and brutal of the bunch, entitled Need Anything and directed by horror documentarian Buz Wallick.
All in all, Tenants is a super entertaining movie with some great stories and some excellent performances from its cast. There's a lot more to the film than there usually is in a film like this, and it's greatly welcome. Tenants may not line up alongside genre greats like Creepshow or Trick 'r Treat, but for an indie anthology it's quite good. If you get the chance to check it out, you definitely should do so. If you're looking for emotionally resonant horror, there's a hell of a lot to love here.
Who this movie is for: Anthology fans, Indie horror lovers, Renters
Bottom line: Tenants is an emotionally impactful indie horror anthology that packs a hell of a punch. I was sent the film to review Need Anything, the stellar short starring Clarke Wolfe and Fayna Sanchez, and while that was by far the most entertaining of the bunch, there's not a single bad short in the whole film. I highly recommend checking this one out if you like horror anthologies, as it's one of the better ones I've seen recently. It's releasing 9/24 on VOD, and it's well worth a rental.
