On DVD Now: Alarm (2008)

Foreign Thriller Hits the Spot!

Set in Ireland, this independent gem while keep you thinking long after the credits roll. Reminiscent of Bentley Little's book "The Association", Alarm centers on Molly (Ruth Bradley) a young woman still greiving the death of her father a short time ago. Now living with older friends, she is eager to get out on her own and get back to an independent life.

Intent on buying a home, she falls in love with the last in a new development outside of Dublin. Taking her time to decide, she is devestated when she finds out it has been bought up when she goes to make her offer the next day. The realtor suggests she uses gazumping, a trick where you essentially buy the house from under the other buyer by offering more money. Thinking all should now be idealic, she soon moves into her new cookie cutter home. The realtor offers to hook her up with a good deal on an alarm, but Molly turns the offer down.

At first it all seems idillyc, Molly throws a housewarming party and all her old school friends come to celebrate. Reconnecting with an old classmate she crushed on in school, she feels like her life is finally looking up. It's then that things turn bad, strange things start to happen to the house and her belongings, but ONLY hers. The neighborhood is otherwise a literal ghost town where she only sees her other neighbors on their way to work and on their way back home.

Soon the now boyfriend moves in after helping to calm her nerves after the first incident. None of this prevents Molly's slow spiral into paranoia as she begins to question everything and everyone around her.

There are no big special effects or know stars, but this film has a slow intensity that builds to a satisfying conclusion while providing us with new twists and turns along the way.

3 1/2 out of 5 (see it when you can, try to go to a matinee or rent if possible)