To Let (2006)

Redundant and unnecessary.

Best movie ever!

A Disappointing Continuation

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Here's a little Spanish horror TV movie that works despite its low budget. Having a good director can really make a difference. Jaume Balaguero also did Rec, though personally I prefer his underrated Fragile. Mmm. I'd rather not describe too much of the story 'coz part of the fun of it was finding out what was happening as it was happening. Let's just say it's about a young couple checking out an apartment they're thinking of renting, and it gets intriguing from there. Balaguero gets the suspense right, as well as the tension of the action sequences. It helps too that he had good actors playing the victims and villains. Really too bad this movie didn't get a theater release. Maybe it'll get a US remake too, like Rec.

When it comes to movies, I scare easy. Real easy. I'm always the first idiot to scream in the movie theater- often I'm the only idiot screaming in the theater. I argue (unsuccessfully) with my fiancé to let me leave the lights on when we watch a horror flick at home. I flinch, I whimper, I cover my eyes with a throw pillow. At a showing of The Descent, I buried my face in my date's arm, only to have him yelp in confusion when I accidentally bit it in a moment of misplaced self-defense. I am a complete and utter wuss.So when I say that this movie was far too ridiculous to be even mildly scary, you can believe me. I mean, heck, it was entertaining; but more in a "you've got to be %@$#ing kidding me" kind of way. Twenty minutes into the movie, I wasn't scared; I wasn't even nervous. I was incensed. I was watching young, healthy, apparently intelligent people getting their behinds handed to them by someone who looked like the local children's librarian. There were a thousand and one ways that this could have been a much shorter movie. It might, just maybe, have been believable if the antagonist had been anyone who didn't look like she had just stepped out of an advertisement for maple syrup; or if her intended victims had been prepubescent (well, maybe not; that kid from Home Alone would have had her beat for sure)- or perhaps bunnies, or hamsters, or blind, deaf, and dumb geriatric pirates missing both their wooden legs. There was one point when two healthy young women- one a mother defending her child- are being menaced by the real-estate-agent-gone-bad. They are both armed (one with a cleaver, one with a taser) and safely positioned behind a metal grate. The real estate agent has just lost her dominant hand, and is clutching her bleeding stump to her chest as she cackles and pokes at them weakly through the grating with a lead pipe. This struck me as more irritating than terrifying and it seems to me that any normal person would simply relieve her of the pipe through means of a simple fulcrum (since she squatting and poking it through the grate down at you, just pull down and you'd have the pipe) and then proceed to smile up at her and calmly ask just what the hell she planned to do now. If the antagonist had been some kind of evil genius, it would have been a different story, but she wasn't; she was almost laughably predictable and run-of-the-mill movie crazy.One gets the feeling that this movie came to be because one of the writers lost a bet. "...ok, but if I win you have to write a movie about a crazy real estate agent in a little yellow raincoat. Oh, and dude, she has to look like your MOTHER."Still, if you found the killer bunny scene in Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail to be funny (and who didn't?) you might enjoy it.

It won't keep you awake but it won't exactly send you to sleep, either.'To Let' is a creepy and unnerving Spanish horror that, to my bemusement upon looking it up after seeing it, was made for television. This works with and against the film: the fact it was made for TV means it will have been produced with the conformities associated with television, namely time limit which is a shame because if the film had been starched out a little further, I feel it would have been a lot better. The film clocks in at just over an hour but what an hour you get – there will be suspense, an atmosphere, dread and plenty of nasty little scenes to keep you occupied.But then again I'm going to go back to the constraints that keep the film from being great. Because of the limitations faced with this made for TV production, the film must treat its subject matter like a sprint more-so than a marathon and that means instead of establishing the couple at the beginning, we begin with them in a car going to the apartment – it would also eliminate the flashbacks included half way through which, to me, felt a little out of place. Again, the constraints work against the brilliant idea. There are scenes in the film in which the little old lady who runs the apartment acts in a caring and, to her, natural manner. The scene in which she helps the female of the dreaded couple cook a meal for the injured other half feels all over the place because this landlady is supposed to be the antagonist of the story and to have her flash between good and natural and evil and nasty is a little frustrating due to the character's inconsistency.But rather than go on about what I would have liked to have seen had the film been longer, I will say that the film works overall as the piece that it is. The idea is excellent and the film captures its own premise brilliantly by utilising its location of an apartment building. I've been to Spain twice in the last two and a half years and on both occasions I stayed in an apartment building run by a landlady – eerie as it sounds. But the large, marble walls that greet you when you enter and surround you unless you are in your respective room work really well here. So do the open, echoing corridors and staircases that just add menace to the situation and location. So the apartment location works wonderfully well here and credit to the director for capturing a location that resembles a real life locale so much, because I've been there and stayed in two respective apartment buildings in the Mediterranean region and I can tell you; just the 'look' and 'feeling' of being there is captured 100%.So along with these ideas of getting right the setting and most of the other aspects of mise-en-scene, To Let is not just let down by its shortish runtime. But then again, perhaps it is because the logistical flaws that begin to creep in toward the end can only really be put down to its short run time: the film is a sprint, not a marathon and thus must round things off quickly by speeding up its plot points and revelations. There are times in the film when you think the characters will either be smarter or more bloodthirsty. I'm going to reference another 2006 horror film similar to this one; Eli Roth's first Hostel attempt. When Paxton finds himself in the situation he's in when the film enters its final third, he knows its kill or be killed and as a result shoots and chops his way out of trouble - he has gone from 'innocent', fun-loving young adult to killer and that's exactly what I would have expected in this film.The truth is the characters of Mario (Collado) and his twin-protagonist girlfriend are still just too nice to strike out. Mario cannot attack the old woman with a mêlée weapon in the kitchen soon enough and when Mario's other half and another captive are in an elevator trying to escape, the land lady's face comes right up to a grill: the hostages have a sharp knife at their disposal and will win the battle if they had just used it right there. By this point, and especially when another character whom we thought was a captive but is actually on the landlady's side is released, the couple at the start are not smart enough or fit enough to survive and it's a shame that their idiocy sees them come so close to loosing out in the end.Twinned with this, the music playing throughout sounds like it's from some 1950s, American sci-fi B-movie and it is difficult to get your head around the fact that the antagonist is, after all, a little old lady who I doubt would put up much of a fight if properly challenged. This made me wonder during the film: what if the landlady was actually a male? The film would've been much more savage since it is the girlfriend who is chased and humiliated for most of the early exchanges and there could've been some great scenes where the landlord is fought, beaten but then is strong enough to get back up again and continue the chase. Still, with a longer time allowance; more money and bigger exposure I guess anything is possible.

The movie is about an older woman of small stature that lures "strong" healthy young couples, and supposedly overpowers and terrorizes them. LOL Even if I were drunk as a skunk this woman would never be able to over power me, and I am 54 years old. LOL Yet, we are suppose to believe that this woman has repeatedly overpowered big strong men and their partners. The worst part, and most unrealistic, was that the big strong, aggressive man was afraid of this small older woman. LOL Of course, if you like being annoyed, then please, go ahead and watch it. But don't say I didn't warn you. This movie is suppose to be a thriller, but it is too absurd to even be scary! The movie is utter rubbish from start to finish.