You Belong To Me

By: Scott Cranin
In-House Review - Oct 24 2007

Warning: Do not watch You Belong to Me alone under any circumstances. This writer watched it with only his dogs for company and they were squeezed so tightly they couldn't breathe. Sam Zalutsky's debut feature is a skillfully executed "grab the edge of your chair" thriller you won't soon forget.
Jeffrey (Daniel Sauli) seems pretty mild-mannered when we first meet him. His lover Rene (Julien Lucas) only wants him in bed, in Jeffrey's apartment, and Jeffrey's fine with that. At least that's what he tells his roommate/best friend Nikki (Heather Simms). But when he spots Rene on the street with another man he trails the men to their house. It's there that he spots a sign that there's an apartment for rent. The somewhat crazed landlady Gladys (Patti D'Arbanville) shows Jeffrey the apartment, which he begs to rent. The last tenant's belongings are all still there, and there's a mysterious black stain on the floor. But Jeffrey is so busy stalking his new neighbor he doesn't notice all the weird happenings in his new apartment. When a friend of the last tenant comes to visit there's a skirmish, and he vanishes after going to the landlord's apartment. It all seems peaceful again until a few days later Jeffrey hears a voice crying for help through the rotten floorboards. The secrets peel away one after another and it's not pretty.
With spot on acting, the whole cast takes watchers of this horror-tinged thriller to the brink and back again. Special mention must be made of Patti D'Arbanville (Andy Warhol's Flesh), whose characterization of the slightly mad landlady is brilliant beyond words. The story of a stalker who is actually being stalked to totally creepy and brilliantly executed. Kudos to writer/director Sam Zalutsky, he's a director to watch.

By: Amos Lassen

Sam Zalutsky's "You Belong to Me" is not necessarily a gay movie-it is not really about being gay but it does have gay characters in it. This is a subtle thriller with a plot that unfolds both slowly and gradually and is intensely compelling.
Everything begins when a young gay architect named Jeffrey (Daniel Sauli) is dumped by his regular sex trick, Rene (Julien Lucas). Jeffrey then embarks on an obsessive stalking of Rene and finds out where he lives and then rents a room in the same building. The landlady of the building, Gladys, (Patti D'Arbanville) who is not exactly in possession of all of her wits becomes somewhat infatuated with Jeffrey and she has her own agenda for him. These plans include , torture and .
Somewhat reminiscent of Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby", director Zalutsky puts a gay touch on a creepy apartment building with a new kind of entrapment scenes. We get the story of a man who movies into the wrong apartment and then finds himself having to deal with the crazies that share his building.
We discover that Rene is living with a long-term lover and he is not at all happy that Jeffrey has moved into the building. Jeffrey who starts his quest as a villain becomes a victim. He is so content on obsessing over Rene that he ignores several signs that are in his path. These signs range from Gladys's over protectiveness which seems to invade his very being to the dried looking paint job in the hall and the fact that the man who had his apartment before he did left and in doing so took not much with him. His clothes and possessions remain in the apartment. One night the missing man's boyfriend appears one night, he demands to know where his lover has gone. Gladys tries to explain to Jeffrey what happened to the man and she gives a deliberately vague account as to why he suddenly moved out. Shortly thereafter Jeffrey begins to hear strange noises coming from the landlady's apartment. This is some scary stuff here.
"You Belong to Me" is urban gothic to the hilt. But even with that the opportunity to make this some kind of low-rate thriller is not used by Zalutsky. This is one of those movies that you will not soon forget. There is great horror here and the movie will chill even the warmest hearts.

By: Jason X

This movie is at first not really a GAY movie per say. Yes there is a gay character or 2, but has nothing to do with being gay really.

"A stalker is being stalked in this totally scary film."
That is not a true statement, the main character is not really a stalker. More of a loner, if that even.

It has no creepy vibe either, at a short 83 minutes, NOTHING even takes place until 40 minutes. Even after that its nothing new in a thriller/suspense type of film.

There is really nothing good to say about it at all, other than the short running time.