The 4th Floor
When interior decorator Juliette Lewis inherits a handsome, huge New  York apartment at the rent-controlled monthly bargain of $400, it looks too  good to be true. It is. Walking into the creepiest collection of neighbors  since Roman Polanski'sThe Tenant, she's accosted by nosy first-floor  busybody Shelley Duvall ("Is that your boyfriend? Oh, you like older men?"),  a surly superintendent who isn't allowed his own set of keys, a mystery  tenant who flees at the sight of her, and a reclusive fourth-floor neighbor  who turns a war of wills into an all-out guerrilla campaign of terror. When  her place is overrun with rats and maggots (yech!), pushy boyfriend William  Hurt insists she leave, but she's determined to continue her first bout of  independence...even if it kills her.First-time director Josh Klauser  manages an entertaining if not quite engaging bit of urban paranoia--what  apartment dweller hasn't worried about a secretive neighbor?--but lets it all  slip into a silly, half-baked climax and a thoroughly predictable final  twist. He also slips in references toRear WindowandPacific  Heights(two other paranoid tales of nasty neighbors), but none of it  compares to morning-show personality Hurt's creepy TV weather clown routine:  he sings, he dances, he chirps "Rise and shine" with the droopy-eyed  intensity of an over-caffeinated drug addict. Now that's scary.--Sean  Axmaker