THE LODGER
Written & Directed by David Ondaatje, based on the 1913 book by Marie Belloc Lowndes
Produced by Michael Mailer & Ondaatje
Released by Samuel Goldwyn Films
USA. 95 min. Rated R
With Alfred Molina, Hope Davis, Shane West, Simon Baker, Donal Logue, Rachael Leigh Cook, Donal Logue, Rebecca Pigeon & Philip Baker Hall 
 

First-time feature director David Ondaatje takes a stab in adapting Marie Belloc Lowndes’ novel based on the Jack the Ripper murders. To call this the most liberal of its many adaptations is putting it mildly, even without the location change from Victorian London to present-day Los Angeles. (The first version was Hitchcock’s first significant feature (1926) and another was an unmemorable film from the ’40s starring George Sanders).

In the dead of night, Chandler Manning (Alfred Molina) and his young new partner, Street (Shane West), attempt to track down a killer of prostitutes who has been mimicking the Ripper. Meanwhile, a mentally-unbalanced woman, Ellen (Hope Davis), and her unsympathetic security guard husband take in a mysterious lodger (Simon Baker), who may be hiding something in his room with super secrecy. 

While Hitchcock was forced by censors to change the ending of his film, it was the only compromise for what was otherwise a masterpiece of tension with bits of intentional dark comedy. But the 2009 Lodger uses the actual Jack the Ripper case as just another plot gimmick in line with hundreds of other Se7en rip-offs.

The screenplay reads like a soggy and melodramatic TV movie either on the Lifetime or USA network (maybe more so Lifetime because of Hope Davis’s plotline of her sexually repressed housewife lusting after her mysterious tenant). The detective storyline with Molina provides the very talented actor very little to work with from scene to scene, and even less with a perpetually wooden Shane West.

The murders are shot lazily from foot level and set to classical music for no apparent reason. Characters, like Rebecca Pigeon’s forensic psychologist, explain things to death, no pun intended. And the ending? Compromised from the novel? I can’t say for certain as I have yet to read the book. I would imagine it would be far more compelling or exciting than what’s presented here, which ends with one of those shoddy cliffhangers most filmmakers learn in year one to steer away from like a bad case of fleas. Save your time and money and rent another Jack the Ripper retread, From Hell, or, better yet, take a chance on Hitchcock’s Lodger. Jack Gattanella
January 23, 2009