1BR

1BR

The admirably ruthless indie psychodrama “1BR” takes approximately 30 minutes (or exactly 27) to become really unpleasant. “1BR” is thus a familiar Los Angeles horror story until this time: an unlucky dupe, I mean young woman flees from home only for the members of an unsuspecting but vile gated community to prey upon her.

To start with, you may not even think that Sarah’s neighbors were capable of being bloodthirsty cultists because they listen to AM radio (a lot of “Happy Heart”), live in a comfortable apartment complex with a pool and regular scheduled barbeque shindigs. However, at least you might smell the rat as soon as twenty something architecture student Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom) attends an open house: paternalistic community leader Jerry (Taylor Nichols) asks if she has any LA-based contacts or pets. Now, these two boilerplate questions might not seem like red flags, but c’mon now, it’s called “1BR”: a horror movie about one white woman.

Furthermore: writer/director David Marmor introduces this scene with a dialogue free, slow motion montage that could be the cornerstone of cheesy and totally unrealistic ad campaign. Just look at the inclusive multi-cultic community in the apartment building through which it starts; there are such people as: little white girl running after a ball; pregnant woman talking to an older beardo; same sex couple washing their laundry; black woman watering her plants. It seems everything is too good to be true since it actually is.

Marmor also immediately lays on too much obvious creepiness about oddball neighbors like klutzy retiree Esther (Earnestine Phillips), one-eyed lurker Lester (Clayton Hoff), and Bobby Sherman equal love interest Brian (Giles Matthey). These side characters are walking and talking plot points waiting to be set into motion so it’s easy to get lost imagining what they’ll eventually become once Sarah realizes she’s unwittingly joined a happyish cult (think of a combination between Charles Manson’s “Family” and Charles Dederich’s Synanon group in Santa Monica).

However, you can hardly blame Sarah for her victimization. She had just ran away from the controlling father (Alan Blumenfeld) and although she owns an anxious-looking house-cat, there is only one other source of non-neighborly human contact: Lisa (Celeste Sully), a friendly colleague from Sarah’s job at some generic stress-filled underpaid internship.

But then again, if you assume that Sarah’s cat will be okay at the end of “1BR,” this movie is not really meant for you. Essentially, Sarah’s neighbors live in a self-policing panopticon which becomes clear metaphorically when they are seen spying on each other through surveillance cameras in another scene. And there are also several conspicuously mounted cameras pointed towards the neighborhood’s human monitors, even if she is instructed to ignore them. Like Brian tells Sarah not to worry about the cameras over those mailboxes earlier in the film too. Everything about “1BR” is exposed too much sometimes literally as a result of its basic camera set-ups and tendency toward naturally lit close-ups or medium shots of brown stucco walls.

Right now, I am obliged to confess my being conned by “1BR.” It happened especially at the 27-minute mark when Marmor decided to make Sarah’s life a living hell. On paper, Jerry doesn’t offer much and his Synanon-type obsession with deprogramming all the “selfish fantasies” and “bad conditioning” that are manifestations of normalcy and self-interest in Sarah as an average twentysomething. However, it is difficult to disregard “1BR” since each other scene heightens Sarah’s danger in a memorably cruel manner.

Some scenes which depict graphic violence and psychological torture can be effectively jarring if they are overripe and sensationalistic like this sort of horror movie demands. What I’d say is that even before I knew how evil Brian was or what had happened to Lester’s eye, I already knew what kind of movie 1BR was but still ended up being impressed by it as Marmor managed to turn the pervasive grubbiness of his film into an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

Therefore, I do not know how well 1BR will age with horror fans as they are now inundated with numerous true-crime docu-series and LA-set indie horror films about serial killers, religious sects, and other charismatic charlatans. However, what I can tell you is that at a certain point; henceforth, no more doubt on Marmor’s artistry but waiting anxiously for things to get worse for Sarah. Sometimes there’s light at the end of the tunnel for Sarah; this may be quite joyous though always shocking too.

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