Across The Hall

This low-budget straight to DVD movie came highly recommended to me, but it was clear after watching it, I didn't see the same film. I posted in an earlier blog about the TV series The Event and how problematic I found the storytelling skipping around from past, to present to even further in the past, to present then to the not-so-distant-past, over and over again. This movie is like The Event on steroids.

Any good story should be able to stand on its own in a linear progression from beginning to end. I'm not opposed to flashbacks from time to time as background on the characters which as done fairly well in several cases here. Where I draw the line is revisiting events over and over again and seeing them from a slightly different perspective each time--much like the film Vantage Point.

Who came up with this color scheme?

The starless cast features Mike Vogel as Julian, Danny Pino as Terry,
Brittany Murphy as June and Brad Greenquist as the mysterious and creepy Porter. It seemed as if the film was alluding to more with this strange porter character, perhaps it was just the outfit and the hat, but nothing ever materialized.  

The Porter. Bizarre in both appearance and character.

The plot centers around an unstable male (Terry) who suspects his fiancee (June) is having an affair. He follows her to a hotel and bribes the porter to give him a room--yes, you guessed it--across the hall from her's. 

Terry

Terry calls his best friend Julian for moral support as he confesses his deepest fears that his fiancee is seeing someone else. He plans to confront June 
(and the man she's there to meet) in her hotel room with the gun he stole from Julian's apartment. Julian does his best to calm his troubled friend and tells him he's on his way and will meet him in the lobby of the hotel.  

Julian

I won't spoil the movie if by some chance you plan to see it. Needless to say, there is a clever twist that takes place, which is perhaps the only shining moment in this film.

June

At the end, I was completely unsatisfied and mostly bored. Although there were some interesting twists, the film had a hollow feeling to it. I don't think you'll be missing anything if you skip out on this DVD.  Out of 5 fingers I'm giving this movie 1.