I would like to welcome you to the first of what I hope to be a biweekly column I am lovingly referring to as Secondhand Terror. I am Kyle Krueger, and I will be taking you through a tour of the strange and macabre, all with a catch; I will only review movies that have been passed down, one way or another. Either from friends with crap they don’t want, pawn shops or thrift stores, these will be the movies others have given up on.

Today, I bring you The 4th Floor. Made in 1999, this is one of those rare films that has an A-list cast, yet isn’t anywhere near the radar. Juliette Lewis (Cape Fear, Natural Born Killers) stars with a supporting cast including William Hurt (Mr. Brooks), Shelley Duvall (The Shining) and Tobin Bell (Saw) about Jane (Lewis), a woman who inherits her aunt’s fifth floor Manhattan walk up. Her boyfriend, TV weatherman Greg Harrison (Hurt) wants them to move in together, but Jane wants to take advantage of the opportunity to live on her own. Jane soon discovers that Alice, her neighbor below has certain rules about noise. Soon, the nice letters and ceiling taps turn into threatening letters and attempts on Jane’s life. Of course, no one believes that an elderly hermit would be capable of these cat and mouse games, but Jane is nobody’s fool and she is out to prove it.

In my opinion, this Hitchcock-esque thriller has some of the most well written tension I have seen in a while. The camera angles really gave me a feeling of claustrophobia. One moment everything was tight and confined, then the screen was blown wide open, giving you the feeling that you were being let in on something that the main character was missing out on. Using echoes of Rear Window, writer/director Josh Klausner showed us through Jane’s eyes the private lives of others, only in the end to let us know that the neighbors were watching Jane too. Red herrings run amok in this movie, never letting you feel comfort in any one particular character.

My one complaint with this movie was the unnecessary need of wacky neighbor characters. At the same time, one character was not used enough. Jerry, the slow witted superintendant, played by Artie Lange (yes, that Artie Lange), could have been used more. While a funny comedian, Lange plays this completely straight and does a great job in his two to three minute speaking role. The remainder of his screen time, he is simply in the background, which I consider an unfortuante loss.

All in all, I give The 4th Floor 4 out of 5.

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