Review of A Demon in My View

"Der Mann nebenan" is a German German-language movie from 1991, so this means it has its 25th anniversary this year. The writer and director is Petra Haffter (still making films today) and it is certainly among her more known works. Here she adapted the novel by Ruth Rendell, who died last year and who was around the age of 60 when this was released in the early 1990s. The star here, however, is of course the lead actor, namely Oscar nominee Anthony Perkins from "Psycho", slightly under the age of 60 and not too far from his death unfortunately in one of his final performances. After his huge success and trademark movie, Perkins is known to have appeared in many films that may story-wise not do justice to his talent probably and, even if there were okay moments in this one, it still fits the category as well. Perkins' co-lead here is actor Uwe Bohm (still under the age of 30) from the very successful Bohm family and Uwe still appears in films today and manages awards recognition. Here he was pretty young playing a tenant that moves in a place next to Perkins' character and we find out Perkins is (once again) a psychopath killer who murders prostitutes this time. But as decent as Bohm may be of a character, his added very little to the movie. This story with the two having the same name adds very very little overall apart from one okay scene that is about who is the other Johnson. And the part with the letter and the (apparently) lost love is not really convincing either. I think Perkins is by far the best thing about the film and I wished it could have been (almost) entirely about him and his crimes, maybe about a suspecting police officer as well instead a neighbor who knows something is wrong, but has his own story that just felt extremely out of place. This wasn't Bohm's fault though of course. He is much better than he is allowed to show us here. So like I already said, if there is any reason to see it, it is for the Oscar nominee in here as Perkins certainly elevates the material here, but everything around him just isn't working out and this also applies to Perkins' final scene which may have a lot of irony to it, but eventually it did not feel realistic sadly. There was much more potential here with a better script and I don't recommend seeing this film the way it turned out eventually.