The Rental

Four young women move into their first off-campus house only to find that the owner (Mike Campbell) is a soul-eater.

Prior to seeing this film, I had never heard of Mike Campbell. Looking him up, I see he has been an actor for a while and has ventured into writing, directing, and such. Based on this one film -- which he did everything for -- I have a few recommendations.

First of all, the overall concept and storyline are not terrible and in another director's hands could have been something. So, Mike, you may have a future as a writer. As for directing and acting, you are not particularly good. At all. Even your casting needs work, as the only actress in this film who had any charisma was Katherine Browning (whose credits seem to only be in Mike Campbell projects). I wish her the best.

The film itself is poorly shot, fuzzy and shaky, and takes at least the first forty minutes to really get going. I was left with the impression that this was made for the purpose of getting four young women alone in a house, possibly with clothes removed. Well, even on that count, it failed, so the skin and gore factor could not redeem the lack of everything else.

Being released from Breaking Glass Pictures means most people will never see it, which is good. The fact it was released at all, when other independent films languish on the festival circuit, is depressing.

Well here we go again another c grade horror film that will disappear into obscurity in say a month. Bad acting with risible dialogue is not my prescription for a good time. I knew I was in trouble as soon as the film started with some horrible special effects and some of the most cookie cutter characters. The director substitutes these two problems by tossing sex scene after sex scene after sex scene in which there was nothing sexy about those scenes. A lesbian couple that are so annoying and a priggish girl add to the broth that has boiled way over my patience level at this point. I love Indy films that are shot on a shoe-string budget ( Check out Family Demons from down under or the no budget film Evil Things to satisfy your c grade film thirst. )but this film doesn't hit any level and after I watched it, I have re-titled it 4 dead girls and 1 dead boy.......

This film goes by many names. However, whatever they call it in whatever DVD bargain bucket you find it in, it should simply be called 'rubbish.' It's low budget. Nothing wrong with that you might say – there are plenty of classic low budget films out there. But this isn't one of them. It's set in a house where four university students move in. The first thing I noticed is that, despite the four girls knowing each other for much of their university life, they actually hate each other – leaving me wondering why they would choose to live together! If their constant bickering wasn't bad enough, their landlord's a 'soul eater.' This, again, presented a problem for me, as the four actresses clearly don't have ever PART of a soul between them, which is going to leave Mr Soul-eater with barely an appetiser to fill him up on.

Maybe I'm being cruel. Maybe the girls DO have a soul. It's just they don't apply said soul to their acting. They're terrible. All of them. Then again, they're acting is positively Oscar-worthy compared to the awful computer special effects when anything even remotely ghostly happens.

Yes, the girls wear skimpy clothes. But, seriously, if you only watch this movie to see girls wearing vest-tops and engaging in some (not particularly nude) sex scenes, then you're better off looking that sort of thing up on the internet and saving yourself an hour and a half.

This film left me wondering whether it was only made because the director to get four girls wearing minimal clothes in the same house for a bit while he filmed them making out?

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