Harking back to the psychological “women in peril” chillers of the 1960s, the fourth film from the revived Hammer films is a slickly produced but disappointingly routine “hider in the house” variant that has one distinction guaranteed to endear it to any long-term Hammer fan as it marked the return to the company – albeit the very different company that existed post-Millennium – of Christopher Lee, making his final appearance under the Hammer banner.

Emergency room surgeon Juliet Devereau (Hilary Swank) is going through a painful breakup with her boyfriend Jack (Lee Pace) who has been cheating on her. Juliet is struggling with her feelings for Jack while searching for a new apartment in New York City that isn’t either extortionately expensive or a complete dump. She can’t believe her luck when she rents a large apartment from Max (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) for a surprisingly reasonable fee. Juliet bumps into the personable Max at a party and flirts with him, eventually starting to date him, unaware that he’s stalking her – he became obsessed with her after she treated his grandfather August (Lee) and has adapted her apartment with secret passageways and a one-way mirror. He starts drugging her, sneaking into her room at night, and watching her and Jack have sex through the mirror and Juliet, becoming suspicious after oversleeping several times, sets up a camera in her bedroom, convinced that someone is attacking her, leading to a violent confrontation with Max.

Smartly directed by Antti Jokinen, The Resident is polished and canters along quite nicely but ultimately it has nothing new to bring to a very well-worn theme. The “hider in the house” sub-genre was already a very over-crowded field and there isn’t much here that we hadn’t seen more than enough times already. The script by Jokinen, Robert Orr and Erin Cressida Wilson skates perilously close to silliness too often for comfort and despite sterling performances from the two leads, we never really care that much about them or their predicaments. Juliet in particular is painted, almost by necessity, as none too bright – alarm bells should have sounded when she learned how low the rent was and should have been deafening by the time she finds out that the only other residents of the block and max and August. But then if she’d been sensible, the film would have been awful lot shorter…

Lee fans could be excused for feeling a little disappointed as he’s barely in the film, turning up long enough to prove that he could still do sinister better than just about anyone before being killed off (Lee suffered an accident during filming, injuring his back which sadly meant a reduction in his role), leaving the stage to Swank and Morgan, both very good in very clichéd roles. They’re both very good performers as their varied filmographies will attest but they’re dealing here with second or even third hand material and try as the might, there’s very little for the to really work with.

Hammer still hadn’t found anything like the house style that enjoyed in their earlier incarnation and perhaps they weren’t looking for one. But The Resident, like all of their newer films, really could have been made by anyone. The Resident looks little different to any number of contemporary horror films and while it’s a cut above most, it’s still a mediocre and undistinguished effort. It’s intermittently creepy, never particularly scary and made with the bland efficiency of so many mid-budget post-Millennial horrors. But the story isn’t really strong enough to sustain a full-length film.

Structurally, The Resident is very odd. We’re told what Max is up to around half-an-hour into the film (in a clever “rewind” sequence that replays that first act again from a different perspective), leaving little mystery to explore, just a series of repetitive, if beautifully shot (by Guillermo Navarro) suspense scenes that we know will only climax in the way that they inevitably do. There are few surprises, and it feels contrived (Max just happens to start obsessing about Juliet just as she’s in dire need of the apartment he can rent her and his whole plan is predicated ion the basis of her being so desperate that she won’t turn the apartment down.)

The Resident is very far from the worst film the revived Hammer would make (that will likely always be the awful Beyond the Rave (2008) and it’s certainly not a film that will leaving you wondering why you bothered with it. It’s OK, but little more, a middle-of-the-road thriller with not a lot to say and not much to make you to care about it one way or the other.