Review ‘The Boy Next Door’ From The Editor

Jennifer Lopez has a fling with the wrong psycho in this silly but competently made thriller.

The Boy Next Door meets Jenny from the Block in this January thriller from Universal Pictures and Blumhouse. Jennifer Lopez plays Claire, a woman who after being cheated on by her husband (John Corbett) is on the mend as her broken family reels from the events. Things are tough for her as her son Kevin (Ian Nelson) grapples with his parents divorce and school where he is relentlessly picked on and her best friend (Kristin Chenoweth) pushes her to get back to the dating scene.

When Noah (Ryan Guzman) moves in next door to help his uncle, he becomes a godsend who helps her with her kid and becomes close to her–but like really close to her.  A little on the Stacy’s Mom side at first. Don’t worry he’s like twenty and adds into her son’s high school to take her English class for credits toward his diploma. Not weird at all, right?

So while the set up is like something you’d see on the Lifetime channel, the movie makes some unexpected choices when it comes to the climax–if you know what I mean. The seduction scene between Noah and Claire, after she goes on a horrible date with a sexist man her age, turns out to be pretty intense as the boy sorta treats her pretty amazingly. They go there and the passion from that scene only added to the drama that unfolds right after. The pace goes back to the typical obsession sort of melodrama and it isn’t until she tries to reject him that things get a bit outta hand.

The not so subtle clues of Noah being obsessed with the Greek hero Achilles’ and his determination of power comes to life when he decides to make Claire see that he loves her.

Help arrives in the form of hulking, ingratiating Noah (Ryan Guzman), whose bulging biceps appear onscreen several seconds before his face does. A 19-year-old San Bernardino transplant, Noah has just moved in next door to help care for his ailing uncle, and in spite of some vague references to an “accident” in his past, he manages to effortlessly wedge himself into Claire’s life over the course of about five minutes, fixing her car and garage door, showing up for dinner, and helping Kevin gain the confidence to talk to the neighborhood hottie.

When Kevin leaves for a weekend camping trip, the inevitable transpires, and Claire gets hot and heavy with the titular next-door boy. No sooner has she attempted the next morning’s walk of shame, however, than Noah turns on a dime into an obsessive stalker, appearing unannounced at her home and somehow getting a seat in her high-school literature class.

The action in the movie-cause yes there is action amps up the otherwise tv special-ness of the movie. It’s not surprise since it’s helmed by Fast and Furious’ Rob Cohen. Corbett gets a fun car scene with a purple hot rod that Noah messed with. The last act follows that as the film goes into Blumhouse thriller territory with the violence getting kicked up a few notches. The mental terrorism of pics from their tryst was child’s play, Noah refuses to lose. The last scene escalates quickly but doesn’t quite embrace the horror thriller completely and is more b-movie unintentionally entertaining.

Perhaps most fatally, the screenplay (by first-timer Barbara Curry) never bothers to question the nature of Noah’s madness, leaving the underprepared “Step Up” veteran Guzman adrift in a pivotal role. It doesn’t help that his attempts at smirking, unhinged malevolence are more Ace Ventura than Norman Bates, nor that he’s clearly a decade older than some of the actors playing his schoolmates, but he has precious little to go on.

After seeing  an indie last year that also centers on a family being terrorized by a lone psycho, you couldn’t help but see how this one falls short. It’s choices could have been bolder in this relatively fun popcorn flick.