The New York Asian Film Festival has featured some amazing movies this year, but few really reach the height of twisted quite like this one. The Tenants Downstairs stars Simon Yam (Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life, The Thieves) as a landlord who inherits an old apartment building from relatives. He posts a notice near the local university to attract tenants and eventually he approves eight renters to move into his Tunghai apartments, but not just any renters. The Landlord specifically rents to people with very normal lives and very normal schedules, all for the opportunity to study them without their knowledge. Yes, it gets weirder from here.
Each apartment is monitored from the Landlord’s office by a hidden camera. When everyone’s life seems to regimented for the apartment owner, he decides to create chaos among the tenants by pitting them against each other, framing people for things they did not do, and by filling the rooms with a fragrance free aphrodisiac causing additional hostility and lustful altercations. When jealously, anger, and lust are left unchecked, people are far more willing to do things they never would have considered if thinking clearly, and every depraved act of humanity is caught on camera by the Landlord. Everything from murder and cannibalism to affairs, abuse, and neglect are all welcomed acts that the landlord gleefully records for his own amusement. The ending, is even stranger and more complex.
The Tenants Downstairs is a psychological thriller that takes you deep into a twisted world where sex and death are for entertainment purposes only. The writing is phenomenal, the characters are vivid and intricate, the movie as a whole is well shot and the music score is brilliant.
Directed and produced by Adam Tsuei, written by Giddens Ko
Film via Amazing Film Studio
Enjoy the trailer
https://www.facebook.com/TheTenantsDownstairs/