This movie was selected for viewing because I live near Pacific Heights - not in it, but close enough to stroll through and marvel at the opulence and sheer wealth it exudes. I'm not actually sure why that setting was chosen for the movie, because it ends up having no relevance whatsoever; it could have been set anywhere, in any town, with any house large enough to have a spare room or two. But Pacific Heights it was nonetheless, much to the dismay of the ghost of Dianne Feinstein, who surely thinks these dumb kids are violating the sanctity of Her neighborhood.
Allegedly described as a "thriller," it is in fact simply a 90 minute piece of pro-landlord propaganda. Imagine trying to set up your sympathetic everyman to whom the viewer can relate as a young couple who simply buy a house at $1.75m (inflation-adjusted from 1990 to 2023) dollars so that they can have tenants pay their mortgage for them! I felt like the Loan Shark who wouldn't even extort them - he just rolls his eyes and reminds them that if they want to they can simply sell their massive, outrageously overpriced mansion, and they will be instantly fine.
Tenancy laws surrounding eviction exist for the benefit of actual normal people, against the overwhelming power of actual landlords, and I just find it profoundly stupid that this movie makes up a caricature of a bad tenant (actively malicious, never seeking to live there at all), using fictional tenant rights they don't actually have (the cops telling him that "if he moved in, it is his now" - absolutely untrue in real life, then or now) to position poor helpless mansion-owning landlords who practice equestrianism as the victim. It just really difficult to imagine who might want to write such a film, to focus on the struggles of such a group. Oh no, the crazy guy is going to go steal some money from another comically wealthy matriarch next! Someone stop him!
Plus, the movie is just pretty boring.
Score: 3/10
IMDb: Pacific Heights
PS: The house isn't even in Pac Heights! It's all the way across town! What a scam.
PPS: As always, very grateful nothing bad happened to the best character (the cat).
