The late Brittany Murphy stars alongside Mike Vogel and Danny Pino in this Hitchcockian inspired thriller about a love triangle which turns murderous.
When Terry (Pino) discovers that his partner June (Murphy) is having an affair, he follows her to a hotel and checks into the room across the hall from hers. He calls his best friend Julian (Vogel) to tell him about June’s affair and that he is in the adjacent room, about to kill June’s secret lover. Julian must try to stop him before he does something he will regret.
I really enjoyed this old-fashioned thriller. Everything from the sets to the costumes to the pregnant pauses makes this the best attempt at a noir thriller I’ve seen in ages.
Brittany Murphy and Mike Vogel look the part and have the chops to carry the film and Danny Pino and the supporting cast (Brad Greenquist was wonderful) only make the proceedings that bit stronger.
Aesthetically, the film is a pleasure to look at. The pile on the carpets, the creases in the sheets, the pattern on the wallpaper, flashes of neon from the hotel sign. I could go on and on about the set design, costumes and lighting all day. The film was actually shot at Universal studios where Psycho and The Birds had been shot decades before and the creepy history definitely comes across on screen.
Sadly, for everything the film gets right in terms of style, setting, feel, tone and idea, its director never really manages to achieve the level of tension Hitchcock undoubtedly would have. This may seem like an unfair comparison on my part, but you shouldn’t really set your film up as an homage to the man’s work, if you can’t carry it off. This said, the director did a remarkable job and in my opinion made a better movie than Van Sant’s redundant Psycho retread.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Across the Hall lies somewhere between late night cable thriller and quality film noir. Its well worth checking out if you’re a fan of Hitchcock and Brittany Murphy, but it will ultimately leave you with a longing for the glory days of suspense, classic noir thrillers and a need to re-watch Hitch’s back catalogue.
