The Fantasia International Film Festival features a wide range of movies. If you look through this year’s slate, you’ll see horror films, action flicks, sci-fi mind-benders, and some super inventive fantasy movies, but when I was looking through the plot synopses, the one that struck me the most was the dystopian thriller The Tenants. It didn’t sound like the best film at the festival or the one I’d enjoy the most, but it was quite possibly the most absurd. I had to do a double take just to make sure I was reading it right, and when I realized I was, I knew I had to check this movie out.
The Tenants was written and directed by Yoon Eun-kyoung, and it stars Kim Dae-gun, Heo Dong-won, and Park So-hyun. The film takes place in a nightmarish version of Seoul, South Korea, where astronomical housing prices and atrocious air quality have become a part of people’s everyday lives, and in this dreary world, a young man named Shin-dong is on the brink of eviction.
To avoid losing his apartment, he decides to take advantage of a law that allows tenants to sublet rooms in their apartments, like the living room or even the crawl space above the ceiling, but to his surprise, the couple who respond to his online ad say they want to live in his bathroom. It’s a bizarre request, but since Shin-dong is desperate for money, he quickly agrees. As you can probably guess, these sublessees soon start to make life difficult for the poor guy, and by the end of it, his existence becomes a waking nightmare.
I’m not going to beat around the bush. I wasn’t a huge fan of The Tenants. The movie has its moments, but it’s too much of a mixed bag to earn a thumbs up from me. For example, when we’re first introduced to Shin-dong and his world, the film commits the cardinal cinematic sin of telling us about his plight rather than letting us see it for ourselves.

Shin-dong and the people around him talk a lot about how difficult their lives are, but for the most part, we don’t actually see them struggle the way, say, the Kim family toils just to stay above water in Parasite. We simply have to take their word for it, and since film is a visual medium, that makes it tough to buy into the lead character and his troubles.
Thankfully though, The Tenants somewhat makes up for that deficiency with its beautiful black-and-white cinematography. This visual style gives the movie an eerily dreamy, almost nightmarish vibe that makes you feel like you’re watching a dystopian episode of The Twilight Zone, and that mostly (but not entirely) compensates for the film’s early storytelling flaws.
Then, when the titular tenants (or, more accurately, the sublessees) finally arrive, the movie gets even better. From the very first time you see these people, you just know something is very wrong with them. Everything about the couple—from the odd way they dress to their off-putting mannerisms to their uncanny valley-esque smiles—makes you question if they’re even human, so you can’t help but sit up and wonder what their deal is.
Soon afterwards, these peculiar people infringe on Shin-dong’s privacy in some very suspicious ways, and that increases the mystery exponentially. It seems like The Tenants is primed to be a thrilling and exciting watch, but from there, the movie quickly begins to fizzle out.

Sure, these sublessees do a few more weird things, but for the most part, they don’t seem to make too much of a difference to Shin-dong’s daily existence. The guy largely just goes about his life the same way he did before, and there’s even a scene where he tells one of his tenants that he doesn’t see them too often. It turns what could’ve been an amazing story into a huge waste of potential, and to be frank, it’s pretty boring.
I spent way too much time just waiting for the film to get interesting again, and it was only in the last 15-20 minutes that I finally got my wish. I’m obviously not going to spoil anything, but suffice it to say that the final act of The Tenants starts to lean into legit horror territory. The movie ramps up the tension and suspense, and for a big horror fan like me, it seems like the movie is going to end on a high note.
But when that end comes, it’s the worst part of the film. Again, I’m not going to tell you what happens, but I will say that it ruins the entire experience. It completely squanders all the goodwill the previous 10 minutes or so worked so hard to win back, and that was the last straw for me.
On the whole, The Tenants is a pretty rocky ride (and not in a good way!), but up until the end, I was still willing to give it a chance to redeem itself. A solid finale would’ve tipped the scales, but unfortunately, it went in the complete opposite direction. It cemented the movie as a big disappointment, so if you get a chance to see it sometime in the future, I suggest skipping it and giving something else a watch instead.
The Tenants played at the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 29, and it’ll be playing again on August 4.