"The Killer Downstairs" is clearly a film about boundaries. In the case of Alison (Ali) Peters, a downtrodden attorney reduced to working at the local Big Box Outlet Store, she is just unable to say "no."

Ali lost her job in a law office because she had an inappropriate affair with another attorney, ending in her resignation. Her marriage ended because she was physically abused by her husband Edwin. Now, Brandon Matthews, the manager of Big Box, who has a reputation as a lothario, invites Ali to dinner at the Fat Cow restaurant, and Ali makes the mistake of agreeing to meet him. Of course, the evening is a disaster.

In order to make ends meet, Ali rents out the lower part of her house to James, who claims that he is in the process of separating from his wife. Instead, he has murdered her as part of a set of serial killings committed across the country. Ali blithely welcomes James into her home with the words, "Mi casa es su casa," and James walks right in and makes himself at home, planning to kill anyone who stands in the way of thwarting his efforts to possess her.

When a former law school classmate, Michael Hammond, returns and provides the opportunity for Ali to get a second chance in the law office where he works, Ali badly misreads Michael's overtures. Michael never crossed the line with Ali. But Ali never understands the concept of a line. As a result, poor Michael becomes yet another casualty of James.

Ali has known Sarah since elementary school, and they are "besties." Sarah tries to give advice to Ali about boundaries. But what Ali really needs is "tough love." Sarah's "spidey sense" was not enough to ward off James. And, in the film's denouement, it is clear from their banter that Ali and Sarah are still talking as if they were high school students. Someone needs to sit the protagonist down and inform her, "You've gotta learn from your mistakes, Ali, and you have learn to say 'no'!!!"

The futile attempt at a suspenseful and non-stop music score degraded the otherwise decent acting of the lead character the unemployed lawyer Alison (Cindy Busby) who rents out her furnished basement apartment to the hunky and handsome recently divorced James (Marcus Rosner).

As people who Alison Peters has had previous conflicts with start disappearing, her basement tenant always seems to be around to lift Alison's spirits. I wouldn't even call this a half decent timewaster, rather just an attractive landlord with a macho basement tenant who we discover rather quickly has a hidden agenda and the blah suspenseful music score is simply just irritating.

There is a cute GEICO insurance TV commercial where there is a bunch of scared loser ladies and men who say to the camera in the middle of the night "Let's Hide Behind the Chainsaws" that appear in the garage while the serial killer is shaking his head how stupid this group must be. If you don't want to feel like these TV commercial losers, I would suggest you pass on this non suspenseful waste of time.

I give it a less than stellar 4 out of 10 IMDB rating.

I really liked this LIFETIME film, but the ending was a little weak and I would've written it differently. In this film, Marcus Rosner ('Christmas In Evergreen') plays James, who seems to be one of those nice guys, the one with the muscular build, handsome face and kind demeanour who would turn any beautiful woman on.....until Alison, actress Cindy Busby, becomes his landlord and as he moves in to the basement apartment downstairs, his true colours begins to show and people begin to disappear. A nice movie, but so so!