The Lodger: Critic Reviews

The Lodger is a spooky story ruined by lumpen dialogue, cloddish performances and a director and writer (David Ondaatje) oblivious to both.

Filled with second-rate Brian DePalma twists, noirishly blurred lights and usually solid actors mouthing potboiler brine, The Lodger resembles bottom-shelf '80s dreck.

The cast works hard to make you believe they believe what the screenwriter tells them to believe. But in the end, it all seems contrived and silly.

What needed to be a taut, structurally sound psychothriller instead malfunctions from the start.

A good cast can't save The Lodger, the utterly wrongheaded fourth movie version of a 1910 novel inspired by Jack the Ripper that was most famously filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1926.

This strained, empty effort doesn't work as homage or update, and in its darkly violent sensibility has neither the glamour of Brian De Palma's referential nightmares or even the narrative fuel of the serial-killer-obsessed procedurals that dominate tv.

What might have played out as a passable whodunit becomes instead a frustrating drag.

Burdened by a cliche-ridden burnt-out-cop movie screenplay and over-the-top performances that don't mesh, this is a thriller that doesn't thrill as much as it irritates.

Ready-made for 3am HBO viewing, The Lodger is an unnecessary remake of a story that's already been covered more than enough times, thanks.

There's a big cast of characters and the suspense is nicely drawn out, punctuated with just enough bloodlust to keep horror hounds happy.

Stylish cinematography along with a pulsating musical score make for a somewhat chilling experience, but had writer/director Ondaatje kept the story focused on the serial killings investigation without going off on poorly developed tangents, the film woul

A virtual tsunami of directorial incoherence %u2014 arbitrary visual cliches of the clouds-speeding-across-the-sky variety, and some of the most inappropriate use of classical music in the history of movies.

...The Lodger ends up just another modern-day policier, on the order of an extended "Law & Order" episode.

Deviates not an inch from its rickety template.

This faux Hitchcock mystery whodunit will only have you guessing why they bothered to remake it in the first place.

Stark, raving nuts

Ondaatje's lack of certainty seeps from the dialogue and characterizations to his choice of an overwrought aria-heavy score and a shoddy sense of style that recalls episodic television and myriad Silence of the Lambs rip-offs.

Nodding, winking and sighing, The Lodger lumbers its way to a final twist so anticlimactic and silly as to warrant an incredulous titter.

It takes guts to remake what many believe to be Hitchcock's first masterpiece, but what Ondaatje's done with The Lodger could not be mistaken for ambition.

Unlike Terence Davies, whose use of the cinematic past becomes a felt element in his storytelling, writer-director David Ondaatje repeats the past so inexpertly that The Lodger (an update of Alfred Hitchcock's 1926 film) is almost comically schlocky.

This serial-killer procedural is about a West Hollywood slasher who apes Jack the Ripper, but the real crime is the travesty writer-director David Ondaatje perpetrates on Hitchcock.

The director playfully taunts with the copycat notion of a little of Jack The Ripper in any man, in this flashy when not murky copycat thriller, and those particular unhealthy fixations manifested in varying degrees on both sides of the law.

While noirish films may appear beyond their welcome, 'The Lodger' compels attention by intricate plotting.