The 2019 movie 1BR is about a young woman who moves to LA to find freedom from her past. She gets the opportunity to move into a fairly exclusive luxury apartment… but not everything is as it seems.

While I ultimately liked this movie, it took some time to build on me. Without going into spoilers (just vague hints), the film shares a certain DNA with movies like Rosemary’s Baby and Hostel… as in you get this feeling of being trapped in a place full of madness with no way out… and the feeling of catharsis after being trapped for too long. All of that worked very well.

What didn’t work was that, at least at first, the scenario the film cooks up just doesn’t seem very believable. And the character’s reaction to it even less so. But that is, I suppose, where character growth comes into play. Not everyone will be the superhero day one.

So, in the end, I came to enjoy the movie though with some reservations. Some may find portions of it unnecessarily sick and that makes sense since the film isn’t otherwise a gory mess. But gore hounds will ultimately not be satisfied either. It walks a fine line, but the acting is solid enough to carry it through.

Score: 76