The Ones Below (2016)

To me, this movie is perfection.

I wanted to but couldn't!

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

After a slow star the film picked up, a nice twist for the film ending and the cast blended well together.

I think my biggest praise for this movie — definitely more of a psychological thriller than a horror — is how damn uncomfortable you feel during THE ENTIRE THING. From the first couple scenes, including ones where soon-to-be parents Kate (Clémence Poésy) and Justin (Stephen Campbell Moore) are excited about their new baby, you just KNOW something is afoot. The director, David Farr, did a great job of using very subtle hints here and there without making it too overpowering. It's eerie and unsettling throughout.Their new downstairs neighbors move in and while everything seems picture perfect at first, you very soon start to see some very disturbing cracks in their too-good-to- be-true facade. It goes from simply awkward to downright terrifying pretty quickly, but so many lines are blurred in this movie that you really have a hard time being sure of anything: are Theresa (Laura Birn) and Jon (the excellent David Morrissey) as truly ruthless as we think, or is Kate just suffering from paranoid, sleep-deprived delusions? As we watch her sink deeper into her conviction that something is seriously wrong, you feel both compassion and cringing, which is impressive.Each character in this movie has their own distinct and brilliantly acted personality. Theresa is a bit over eager but ultimately very vulnerable and earnest. Jon is brusque and conservative. Kate is attempting to pull together a confident demeanor while feeling around in the darkness that is new motherhood, and she's instantly likable. And Justin is just trying to keep things together between work and Kate's increasing paranoia and erratic behavior — you can feel how thinly he is stretched by it all.The ending is heart-wrenching to say the least… so well done that I sat with my hands clasped over my mouth as I gasped. Just awesome from top to bottom.

THE ONES BELOW is a modern addition to the wave of psycho-thriller films that were all the rage in Hollywood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These films typically depicted suburban families at the menace of urban threats and THE ONES BELOW is no exception. This time around, dull couple Clemence Poesy and Stephen Campbell Moore are an expecting couple whose relationship with their new neighbours, played by David Morrissey and Laura Birn, quickly sours.This thriller has an early plot twist which comes out of nowhere and is extremely shocking and powerful. Once I saw it, I was hooked. Sadly, the rest of the narrative can't match these early moments, and indeed this is a film that gets gradually more and more predictable as it goes on. As usual the main characters are ten steps behind the viewer and it gets more than a little familiar and more than a little tiresome very quickly.Poesy makes for an unlikeable heroine although Moore is good, even though his character is typically dim and oblivious to what's going on around him (much like his role in THE CHILDREN). Birn and Morrisey are excellent in their subdued and creepy roles, no surprise given the latter actor's pedigree. This low budget story is well shot and realistic, but towards the end it gets very dramatically unsatisfying, which I put down to laziness on the writer's part. The extensive use of flashbacks is also poor. In the end, this is a seen-it-all-before type film that needs more oomph and more originality to make it work.

Relatively new take on an old plot - what happens when an apartment/condo dwelling young couple who are expecting a child meet the, at first charming & worldly, new neighbors who are also expecting their first child, and yes, live in the apartment below. Well, things turn out a little tense between them when an accident occurs (random & innocent, or negligent?). Things start happening, and again, are they random & innocent or are they planned along with the psychological consequences? Well acted, directed and written. Possible spoiler to the ending. So DO NOT READ until after seeing the film and not sure because, if I'm right (pretty sure I am) it will "spoil" the denouement. The film purposefully makes our two female protagonists similar in appearance; in cases like this common plot thickener I check nose, ear, chin shapes as well as eye color, especially after not paying that close of attention throughout the film and now I'm paying for it by having to go back and check. Baby is happy with it's new parents.