Apt Pupil

Apt Pupil (1998) is a psychological thriller you can watch online on iFILM. Bryan Singer adapts the Stephen King novella, casting Ian McKellen and Brad Renfro in the two roles that carry the whole film.

High schooler Todd Bowden is obsessed with the history of the Holocaust. One day he recognizes his elderly neighbor as Kurt Dussander, a former death-camp commandant who has spent decades hiding under a false name. Instead of turning him in, the teenager strikes a bargain: silence in exchange for first-hand accounts of how it really happened. Those sessions stir up something in both of them that should have stayed buried. The old man slips back into the man he used to be, and the boy develops a taste for it.

Bruce Davison, Elias Koteas and David Schwimmer round out the cast. Singer builds a tight two-hander with almost no on-screen violence, trading it for a tightening noose of blackmail and one nagging question: who turned whom into the monster. Stream Apt Pupil (1998) online on iFILM.