Movie Review: The 4th Floor

There's a particular genre of movies that appeals to me. For a lack of a better term I like to call them From Hell movies. Everyone has seen at least one: notorious examples range from Fatal Attraction (One-night-stand from Hell) to The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (Nanny from Hell). I would even say that everyone has their favourite fear transplanted to the big screen: Tenant from Hell (Pacific Heights), Ex-con from Hell (Cape Fear), Son from Hell (The Good Son), Roommate from Hell (Single White Female) and so on.

The genre really found itself in the 80s, hit a peak in the early 90s, then fizzled out when CGI arrived and Hollywood ran out of day-to-day bogeymans (and good scripts). One of the last movies to come out in this genre, and which was completely overlooked (at least I didn't hear about it) was The 4th Floor, with Juliette Lewis and William Hurt.

I saw this movie last night, and later had nightmares with it. I hadn't planned on watching it - I was simply killing time until Battleship Galactica began (I wanted to see what it was like) - but I ended up getting sucked into the story and watched it till its end.

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