Rent The Cellar (2012)

A curious beast - The Cellar review by NP

Relishing in its micro-budget, ‘The Cellar’ – otherwise known as ‘Do You Like My Basement’ – is set almost entirely in one location. Claustrophobic, unsettling, and viewed mainly through the camera lens of film-maker Stanley Farmer (Charlie Floyd), this cellar plays host to visiting characters who are well played and often a little larger than life. This lifts the story and stops it becoming as dull as such a thin story might otherwise have been.

Not that there isn’t incident, and some of it impressively nasty. Farmer is an impressive narrator, never letting the fact that his filmic efforts have thus far been ignored. He is clearly determined to make what is almost a snuff movie, possibly for his own entertainment, or possibly to ‘break’ the market – despite the fact that he is desperately unhinged.

I enjoyed this. It has a vein of dark humour running through it - imagine a cut-price Saw film featuring a Jigsaw wannabe. What it lacks in sophistication, it makes up for in the seedy isolated obsession of its main character. My score is 7 out of 10.