The Occupant

Without knowing a single thing about the movie, as I stumbled upon it by random chance, I still opted to watch it and check what director Hugo Keijzer had to offer.

Writers Philip Michael Howe, Hugo Keijzer, Roelof Jan Minneboo and Xiao Tang put together an okay enough script. However, the narrative does struggle a bit with the pacing. Now, there was a lot of potential to "The Occupant", but ultimately the writers didn't fully deliver on that potential.

I literally wasn't familiar with a single actress or actor on the cast list. But that was actually something that spoke in favor of the overall impression of the movie, as I do enjoy watching unfamiliar and new talents on the screen.

The movie does have a lot of nice visual shots, which definitely helped establish the atmosphere and mood of the movie.

"The Occupant" certainly is a watchable movie, but hardly one that I would recommend you to rush out and get to watch. Nor is it a movie that warrants more than a single viewing.

My rating of director Hugo Keijzer's 2025 movie "The Occupant" lands on a generous four out of ten stars.

Where to start?

Was looking forward to this.

Sci-fi vs reality.

Human difficulty vs death

No spoilers, this is a movie of three parts and they just fail to join up.

Lots of open ends, with no answers.

Full of promise and yet delivers less and less as time goes on.

I was hoping the end would be transindetal or sci-fi laden, no such luck.

The Good The performance of the actors and the chosen locations were very acceptable

The Bad Dialogue moved from bland to dull

The Ugly The script and story held a lot of potential which was either abandoned or ignored. Then the major plot holes that were never addressed so you never were sure if a plot hole was an abandoned plot point or not. A major point was the distance that the MC travels was both inconsistent and impossible to cover in the time given.

Firstly, if you're looking for a sci-fi movie, this isn't one. I'm bewildered why it would be marketed as such. If anything, it's a wilderness survival movie, where every calamity that occurs is a result of the character making immensely dumb decisions. It's a movie that deals with guilt and mourning; but for no coherent reason and in a completely over-the-top manner.

Without giving spoilers, the movie is essentially just a string of glaring plot holes linked together with over-acting, ludicrously 'tense' music, and ridiculously inappropriate sentimentality. It's completely incoherent, and that does nothing to engage the viewer.

This is a huge miss. Don't waste 105 minutes on it.

Basically without spoilers this is a fantasy twist to a coming to terms with death story. I quite liked it. Good acting, good story. Interesting format to explore the topic in. It's hard to place as a genre. I can imagine it being some type of norse myth, but the story is basically about dealing with death (not the person, I mean people dying)