Delayed Reaction: 1BR

Premise: A woman moves into a new apartment building to discover there's a nefarious reason behind the closeness of all her new neighbors.

 

Stay with me, please.

 

There are two ways to get open in basketball. You can either design a play or make a move to outsmart your opponent or you can run around like a bat out of hell quick enough that your defender can't keep up. Most of the best movie surprises resemble the first strategy. They are built off genius misdirects that completely fool people. Then there are movies like 1BR that churn through events so quickly that you can't keep up. Five minutes into 1BR, you know the big twist. Clearly, the neighbors are in a cult or something like it. What I didn't expect was how quickly the movie reveals that. I figured the cat would be phase one of several phases of the protagonist, Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom), coming to realize something was wrong with the place. Instead, that's revealed in the first 20 minutes or so and the game of the movie becomes figuring out how quickly they'd move to the next beat and what stopping point they would choose.

 

Not a lot of movies opt for this method. It's hard to churn through so much plot in a satisfying way. This kind of structure doesn't get as much attention after the fact either. "[Luke] I am your father" is a much better conversation than "I knew he was his father, but I didn't think they'd tell me that in minute 10". It's just as effective in the moment though and is a great defense against puzzle-solver audiences.

 

So, I enjoyed not knowing how far 1BR was going to take things. That alone gives the movie a pass in my book. I'm glad I watched this as part of a NetflixParty with friends. In my opinion, thriller horror is better with friends. Scary horror is better alone. Scary horror makes me afraid of every creak and tap I hear. Being around someone else can cut that tension. Thriller horror works best with others, because you can collectively address the "are they going to go there?" question. You can make an event out of when the cat will die or how the friend is going to show back up. By myself, that just wouldn't've played as well.

 

No one in the cast stuck out as doing anything that great. They were functional. This is the kind of horror movie that could've gotten away with a "name" in the lead role. Like, throw a Sarah Bolger into the lead role and tell me she doesn't add to it. The mythology of the movie doesn't make great sense upon closer inspection and the "reprogramming" scenes went on a little long. I could easily envision a better version of this movie, but the one we got was ok.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend