Killing Floor, The

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Sometimes you find little cinematic gems among the smaller, low-budget films that studios release directly to video. And sometimes you don't. In the case of ThinkFilm's 2006 thriller "The Killing Floor," which premiered at the Malibu Film Festival in 2007 and is now making what is essentially its debut on DVD, we've got a film that starts out with an interesting premise and then disintegrates partway through. Still, it's a notch above most made-for-TV dramas, so for mystery fans it might not be an entirely bad rental choice.

Co-written, co-produced, and directed by fledgling feature filmmaker Gideon Raff, "The Killing Floor" begins as a suspense flick. A successful New York literary agent, David Lamont (Marc Blucas), who handles mostly horror writers, moves into an extravagant, old, downtown apartment building. He takes the penthouse, which occupies the top three floors, a place so large it could easily house most of the USC football team. But no sooner does he move in than peculiar things start happening.

First, David thinks somebody is stalking him. Then somebody tries to run him down in the street. After that, the son of a former tenant shows up claiming the penthouse is rightfully his. Next, David finds an envelope full of pictures slipped under his door, pictures of a ghastly murder that apparently took place in his new house but which the police subsequently covered up. Later, he discovers a videotape in the middle of his front-room floor, a tape showing police images of a crime scene on his premises, a scene labeled "the killing floor." But that's not all. David also hears noises at night, like people skulking around in the rooms. Finally, he learns that somebody is actually spying on him full time and taking pictures of him! Needless to say, he's about out of his mind with anxiety by the time things come to a head.

Not only do we get a ton of suspicious happenings, we get a ton of suspicious characters to go along with them. There's Jared Thurber (Jeffrey Carlson), the looney who thinks he should have inherited David's penthouse from his father and on several occasions threatens David about the matter. There's Audrey Levine (Reiko Aylesworth), David's pretty downstairs neighbor, who has heard "stories" about the penthouse's former owner. There's Garret Rankin (Derek Cecil), David's onetime best friend, a person David left in the lurch in a business deal and who now clearly resents him. There's Rebecca Fry (Sheri Appleby), David's assistant, a cute-as-a-button but oddly plain-Jane young woman who's always around the periphery of the action. And there's Detective Martin Soll (John Bedford Lloyd), a tough NYPD cop helping David sort out his various troubles.

Of the various actors in the film, each makes a distinct impression. Blucas as the lead has a sort of Daniel Craig look and demeanor about him, and we know his character is cool because he always sports a stylish two-day stubble on his face. More important, though, is Lloyd's detective, a wonderfully hard-boiled type, the epitome of what most of us picture as a big-city undercover cop. While the other actors are also competent enough, these two dominate the picture.

Moreover, the director does what he can with the limited budget he's handed. Although almost 90% of the action takes place in David's penthouse digs, director Raff makes the most of every dark, shadowy corner and creates a respectably noir look for the film.

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