Tenants is an anthology that contains several particularly strong shorts, with none disappointing. Perhaps having too many segments throughout causes the stronger portions to run a touch too short, but it remains an entertaining watch.
After waking up in an unfamiliar apartment complex, Joni (Mary O’Neil) desperately searches for her sister while being hunted by a shadowy figure. As she makes her way through the building, unspeakable horrors befall the tenants she interacts with.
Anthologies always used to be rather hit or miss. There would be ones with a few cracking shorts, then ones that would leave a bad taste in the mouth. It was the nature of the beast, really, and the bigger issue was how all of these stories meshed into one cohesive piece. Since the VHS anthology films, it seems as if filmmakers have gotten a better grip on making sure the overall quality and that important cohesion are on a solid level.
Kicking off with one hell of a bang of an opening, Tenants sets its stall out to be a memorable anthology. Our character, who leads through all of this horror in the apartment building, comes to us in a glorious, practical, effects-laden manner. These segments work well to keep the film running smoothly, yet they don’t have the strongest impact you would want them to, leaving you wanting more from them to explain Joni’s story further.
Buz Wallick’s Hoarder breaks your heart as Jude (Myles Cranford) lives in squalor after the passing of his wife, Ellie. He can’t let go of her, lamenting that a husband should never outlive his wife as, at least in his case, he is not strong enough to live without her. There is a painful tenderness here that works on you, so once we reach the short end, you become conflicted. You want Jude to be at peace, but at what cost?
The Photograph is a rather exceptional short in how it flips a murder with Miranda Covers’ Katherine lambasting her murderer Leonard (Douglas Vermeeran). The two performances are great, with Cover getting the chance to really let us see the pain and frustration that a ghost would feel for being needlessly murdered; the lost moments and thoughts that we would usually see on the victim’s family side are transplanted onto the victim herself and boy does she make the week Leonard feel every ounce of her anger.
Laundry Day from Jonathan Louis Lewis is another wrench to the heart that, in a horror anthology, you just do not see coming. A couple, Sara and Tim (played marvellously by Tara Erickson and Ivan Djurovic, with Erickson especially doing her utmost to completely devastate you), have lost their unborn child, and Sara especially is struggling to come to terms with the loss. Yet, this is a horror short after all, and what comes Sara’s way is a wonderfully grotesque bit of body horror.
With another few shorts littered throughout Tenants (there are seven overall, which is a few too many to break down for this review), you will be bound to find a short that you connect with and thoroughly enjoy, with the unmentioned Need Anything being a particularly fun and bloody highlight. While directed by multiple directors, Mary O’Neil has her hands over each segment as writer or co-writer, and she has conjured up some great moments, some of which deserved to have their own feature-length tale.
Tenants works well to be an entertaining horror anthology that you can sink your teeth into. It has more than enough variety within all of its stories to please most horror fans with the short Nah, surprisingly, with how funny it is considering its length. This is a low-budget horror that audiences should check out.
★★★
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