Small Apartments (2012) review

Music video vet Åkerlund, who made - in my opinion - one of the worst movie's of the aughts (with Spun) has returned in a new decade to make an almost-as-bad adaptation of Chris Millis' novel about a hairless hermit (Matt Lucas) who (accidentally) killed his creepy landlord (Peter Stormare), has a brother with a brain tumor (James Marsden) and dreams of going to Switzerland. You can't have a movie that seems to find the grotesque fascinating (a porcine man walking around in only his tighty-whiteys, rotting, filthy apartments, a toe being eaten by a dog, etc.) and expect anyone to find any kind of catharsis in a hastily-stapled together conclusion where everyone's suddenly forlorn (James Caan's character kills himself with pills, Johnny Knoxville's character dies after being shot): it's simply disingenuous. Åkerlund's 'talents' are for over-lighting locations with the most hideous colors and taking delight in mocking white trash; it's like he saw Korine's Gummo and felt like he needed to adopt that aesthetic for all his movies.