13 Cameras is about an unsuspecting married couple, Ryan and Claire, who move into their home unaware that their landlord, Gerald or as one tenant called him, Geri, has secretly installed cameras throughout their home. Will they figure out what Gerald is up to, and how will Gerald react if and when they do?

I appreciated 13 Cameras because as a former renter whose mother was completely paranoid and heard every nightmare news story about landlords installing two-way mirrors and cameras, stealing tenants’ underwear and entering the space without advance notice or permission, this movie vaguely sounded like a documentary, not a horror film. This movie wisely exploits our fears about moving into new, unfamiliar places and our complete vulnerability of not having technical expertise and needing to rely on a stranger for necessities like water. The nature of the relationship innately has a power differential.

I did not expect to be immediately interested in the couple’s story. I instantly picked up all the hints that 13 Cameras dropped about the marital problems so there are three stories braided into one messy collision course. Claire is oblivious, but not stupidly so, and happily expecting their first child. To an outsider, Ryan is obviously dismissive and resentful of Claire from the moment that we meet them, but you can see how Claire may not see his behavior as a red flag if he always acts in this manner. She may mistakenly think that it is his personality to be the sober, boring realist who reassures her and helps her move forward in spite of her misgivings when he is actually worse than she thinks that he is. Gift of fear, Ryan, gift of fear! If Gerald was not a perv, he could totally have fun messing with Ryan, but this movie is not that kind of movie where Michael Keaton or Ray Liotta lurk in the shadows expecting to take your girl.

I did not anticipate that 13 Cameras saw Gerald as the star of the movie like Michael Myers in Halloween, Pinhead in Hellraiser, Freddy in Nightmare on Elm Street or Jason in most of the Friday the 13th films. Gerald is simultaneously a stereotype, our nightmare come to life and kind of realistic. I can say that I have met a guy who smelled, looked like and walked like him and was a complete perv (the paper bags broke to reveal piles of porn VHS tapes in the early twenty-first century). While some of Gerald’s actions strained my suspension of disbelief and seemed epically Rube Goldbergian, others were actually quite brilliant. By the end, he is more sinister and warped than even I expected, but seemed feasible in an unfortunate quotidian way. Neville Archambault really sinks his teeth into his fearless, perv portrayal. He does not play him as purely evil, campy or even in expected deviant ways though he plays his character completely devoid of vanity, and his look screams poster perv. He is just so wrong that even his attempts at normal human interactions are dripping in completely off. He feels panic and fear, but does not seem even a little bothered when he hears people discussing him in disparaging terms.

As unseen viewers of others’ lives, we are complicit with Gerald’s skeevy actions. 13 Cameras raises questions about the idea of consent to viewers, but the differences between what interests the viewers and Gerald is actually quite stark. Even when he sees something juicy, he does not seem to care about the narrative, just whether or not the content is interesting to his prurient eye. While he cares more about homemade porn, I related more to Paul, Ryan’s friend, who was actually a good guy, and his significant other, Audry. They are not just performative good like Ryan, but Paul is the real deal. He may have started as Ryan’s friend, but he hits Ryan with a dose of reality about relationships and what Ryan is actually bringing to the table. When Ryan confesses to Paul, Paul is disgusted, slowly draws boundaries, gives solid advice and does not keep any secrets from his partner. Be Paul!

For 13 Cameras’ end to work, I now have to worry about Paul and Audry, and I kind of think that they were forgotten to prioritize Gerald’s intelligence though it is hard to reconcile with many of the needless risks that he takes. Paul and Audry care.

Even though 13 Cameras’ premise is prurient, there is not a lot of gratuitous nudity. While Gerald is looking at couples’ getting intimate, the camera focuses on his face. While there is never a good reason to have a person chained to a wall, we do not see any sexual violence. The filmmaker, writer and director Victor Zarcoff in his directorial debut, instead lingers on Gerald and the way that he occupies space and uses things. Oddly enough, with the underwater shots, he kind of reminded me of the personification of the shark in Jaws, always vigilant for prey in his territory.

I had mixed feelings about his first onscreen victim. It felt as if 13 Cameras was punishing that person. Also I considered how it would have been more shocking if he had a thing for dudes, not women, and the punishment element of the horror would have been amplified. There are quite a few nuts out there, Jeffrey Dahmer being the most famous who prey on men though Gerald is not a serial killer per se. It actually would have made the ending more irredeemably scary, but movie studios and audiences would be furious.

I did enjoy how 13 Cameras dutifully laid out the obstacles that the couple would face if and when they had to confront Gerald. In many ways, this film is about toxic masculinity, but instead of most horror films allowing Ryan to have a successful masculine showdown with Gerald and permit him to redeem and graduate to masculinity by overcoming his inadequacy in masculine normative activities at home. Instead Ryan just shifts his toxic masculinity to work. Ryan is Gerald’s unwitting accomplice and sets up most of the obstacles that women have to overcome to defeat Gerald. He provides him with victims. He provides Gerald with a cover of normalcy and is dismissive whenever anyone expresses concern. I was left with a question which is never addressed in the film. Is the house’s poor cell reception intentional or accidental? Gerald is Ryan without the good guy drag. Gerald has one advantage over Ryan: he is more interested in the baby, but I think that his interest as depicted in this film illustrates that people need to ask for permission before touching a pregnant woman. Gerald and Ryan see people not as independent from them, but in relation to how useful they are to their respective desires, especially women.

13 Cameras is an effective horror movie that captures the unspoken fears of renters. If it does not sound like your cup of tea, I would not bother to watch it, but my mom, who is a lightweight when it comes to horror films, was definitely entranced and vicariously watching it through me so it may be a good gateway movie for people who normally avoid this genre.