"The Sound of Silence" is about Sarah, a mute who spends almost every waking moment dancing with an unseen partner. Her neighbor Henry, no longer content with just leering at her from afar, seizes an opportunity to get up close and way, way too personal. As Sarah is raped and tormented, Henry starts to suspect they aren't alone, culminating in some supernaturally surreal moments. Think The Outer Limits meets I Spit on Your Grave. The third story, "Full Moon Rising", is my favorite of the bunch. Jimmy is a shut-in who rarely leaves his apartment except to grudgingly go to group therapy. After his first session, he's attacked by some sort of animal. His wounds start healing pretty quickly, he develops a taste for raw ground chuck, and...wow, is that a hair on his chest? Jimmy's convinced he's becoming a werewolf, and he starts to dress the part with a body count to match. The final segment is a straightahead serial killer tale about a cab driver who butchers his fares, but his most recent customer is a little too kindred a spirit.

I really got a kick out of The Tenement. I don't mean that in a condescending "oh, for a no-budget shot-on-video flick, it's okay, I guess" way, but that it hits all the notes it tries to make. There isn't a lot of on-screen gore, but when The Tenement tried to be brutal, I winced. Its stabs at humor, particularly "Full Moon Rising", frequently made me laugh, and there really isn't any unintentional comedy to be found. It's clever and works well within the boundaries of a non-existent budget. Because it doesn't try to be a special effects showcase drenched in splatter and desktop PC-grade CGI, those sorts of limitations rarely distract, and the moments with make-up are generally pretty effective. The weakest point is the acting. Pretty much everyone in the movie is teetering on the brink of sanity, and the cast doesn't consistently pull it off. I don't think the spotty acting drags the movie down much, and I was able to look past most of it, but that impacts the movie more negatively than the limited production values. Also, most anthologies have at least one clunker, and in The Tenement, it'd probably be the last segment. It's not so much that "The Taxi Driver" is bad -- it's just short and is much more straightforward than the quirkier bits that precede it.

One of the things The Tenement does particularly well is play with the audience's expectations. The first story is about an obsessed horror nut with a demanding mother that spends most of the segment conveniently just out of the frame. I waited and waited for the inevitable homage that was so obviously being telegraphed, but...I was wrong. I was also pretty certain it would end on the same note as Paul Verhoeven's contribution to HBO's anthology series, The Hitchhiker, which was also about the production of an indie slasher flick and the backlash from complaints about shoddy acting. Again, nope. I also thought at first that "Full Moon Rising" was going to be a standard werewolf tale with some kind of twist, but that completely shattered my expectations. Although all of the stories in The Tenement toss out some level of humor, "Full Moon Rising" sustains it the longest. The basic premise -- a whackjob who decides he's a werewolf, dresses up in a fright mask bought from Party City with some...adjustments made to the rubber gloves, and kills everyone in sight -- is particularly clever. Any horror flick that pays homage to Warner animation is alright in my book, and my absolute favorite moment in the entire movie is when Jimmy looks longingly at his pal with an overlaid image of a steak. Michael Gingold also has some fun quipping about low-budgets and Fangoria in his memorable turn on-screen. The Tenement as a whole manages to strike a balance where it doesn't take itself too seriously, but it's not constantly winking at the audience either. It's more entertaining than a lot of genre movies with exponentially larger budgets...