Reloading - The Boy Next Door (to Michael Myers)

Were you expected a review of Taken 3 or American Sniper? Well those probably aren’t happening. The former because I still have yet to see it and probably won’t in the near future. The latter because, again, still not particularly interested. How did I end up going to see The Boy Next Door? A series mostly fortunate events led me to seeing this with a friend where we both had a night off and wanted to actually go out. Was it my first choice of movie? No. But it’s also January and aside from Taken 3, there aren’t all that many options. Go figure. 

The plot? Over-the-top attractive and innocent looking young man (Noah) moves in with his uncle next door to Jennifer Lopez and her son. Noah immediately befriends the son and becomes good friends with Jennifer. She’s married to a cheating husband (which is important) and her life is kind of on the edge. A series of less fortunate events push her into a situation where Jennifer and Noah are along together on a dark and stormy night, leading to a sexual encounter that she immediately regrets. Her sudden withdrawal from Noah enrages him and he comes after her.

Though use of blackmail, threats of violence, and basic stalking 101, Noah proceeds to make Jennifer’s life more miserable the longer she stays away from him. This isn’t helped when she starts patching things up with her husband and trying to rebuild her family. A life is lost in the process, the struggle intensifies, and things get ridiculously out of hand when a simple call to the cops would have probably solved the problem multiple scenes prior to when things reach the climax. Needless to say, Noah is kind of a sociopath who easily fools everyone (for the most part) and makes everything feel somewhat cliché in the whole “been-there-done-that” kind of thing I’ve seen played out in other similar films, shows, and so forth.

I feel I’ve been watching too much CinemaSins on Youtube because I kept noticing little details that didn’t quite add up. For example, when Jennifer uses her phone’s flashlight to search a dark house, she doesn’t use an actual flashlight app. Instead, her screen is all white and looked a lot like a blank Facebook page. And if you're searching your friend's house (and they were just speaking with you not all that long ago) only for you to arrive and everything is dark and quiet, there's a good chance you shouldn't be in that house. How many people have we lost to ignoring that simple rule? Also, what kind of teacher (Jennifer is a teacher by the way) shows up to her class at the exact same time as her students? Don’t most teachers usually prepare for class and come in early to set up? She should have been there earlier to keep Noah’s bullshit in line instead of being an ill prepared teacher.

And everything starts off because Jennifer got hot and bothered looking out her window late one night to see Noah looking at himself naked in a mirror. And while I won’t judge Noah for looking at himself naked because while I think that’s bizarre, I’m willing to bet there are guys who are that narcissistic enough to actually do that. But what I will call out is that neither of these two use their blinds/curtains at all throughout the film and that’s the main cause of most of the problems from the start. Granted, Noah is a sociopath trying to tap Jennifer Lopez’s ass, so his lack of use is premeditated. But Jennifer has no excuse for not using her blinds and respecting the privacy of her neighbors.

Time also skips ahead at an uneven pace that makes it hard to tell just how long the events of the film take place. For me, it feels like these events are happening over the course of just a handful of days. But looking at it logically, how many schools have their first school dance only a handful of days after their first day of school? Usually the first dance isn’t until a month and a half to two months into the school year. But the time progression didn’t feel anything like that. And some scenes, characters stated a specific time like, “It’s only 8:30.” But it’s broad daylight out like it’s only the middle of the afternoon. Then we cut to a scene where it actually looks like it’s 8:30 seconds later.

Also, one thing I kind of threw together nearing the end of the film. The husband cheats on the wife first. The only thing put at risk from his selfish actions is his marriage and that remains in tact (spoilers) by the end of the film because him saving the life of his wife totally makes her forgive such actions. But she drunkenly gets raped (and it’s basically rape) by Noah (while still married) and the lives of her friends and family are at risk. While I don’t think the film was intending for this to be what anyone noticed, I almost feel like a subliminal message is being laid here that is a little tough to overlook.

There’s also a bully picking on Jennifer’s kid at school (unnecessary subplot to make us sympathize with a character who we already get is kind of a loser at his school). But the bully is picking on him for wetting his pants once when he was having a near-death-level allergic reaction to a bee sting. I don’t care what anyone says. Yes, I know bullies like that probably exist. But you can’t tell me there aren’t some half-way decent kids who wouldn’t stand up to this jackass harassing someone who could have died from that incident. It makes the scene when Noah beats the crap out of him predictable, yet enjoyable. But it doesn’t change the fact that such a kid would likely have been silenced or killed long ago.

Acting wise… meh. It’s nothing that’ll win any award and nothing mind-blowing, but most of it’s consistent and simple. I would have liked to see Noah’s character be played a bit more off-the-wall-insane during the final scenes when we all are fully aware he’s a nutter. Throw some more maniacal laughs and twitchiness like he’s the Joker who drank ten cups of Red-Bull-Coffee. More build-up to the family-team-up at the end would have been nice to see too. Not that it wasn’t predictable. But seeing the husband work his way up from the scummy first impression we get to being the hero (or one of the heroes) would have been a better arc. But he has so little screen time it barely matters.

Speaking of the husband, another nitpick I have is the gift he gets his son early in the film. It’s the son’s birthday and he gets his boy a self-made computer. In the film, he states it took him three weeks to build. And we later find out he’s very knowledgeable about computers. While I’m no expert on computers myself, I built myself a very up-to-date gaming PC rig in a single day. Why the hell did it take a guy three weeks to do what I assume is probably his job or related to his job? All building a computer is, is plugging components into the right spots and then installing an OS. All of that is accomplished within a day (no more than three).

All in all, this film is nothing all that special or interesting. It’s by no means bad. But it doesn’t do anything with this genre or style of film that we haven’t seen before. Neighbors doing something weird and out protagonist is a voyeur in that regard? Rear Window. Married couple having issues that need working out and things escalate into a mur-diddly-urdler of a situation? Gone Girl. Creepy stalker that won’t leave the protagonist alone? Halloween. So if you like horror/slasher flicks, I can’t stop you from seeing The Boy Next Door and it isn’t bad enough for me to say you shouldn’t. But if you’re strapped for cash or have something better to do, you aren’t really missing out on anything revolutionary.

That’s all for this week’s Reloading Review. If you enjoyed that and want to see more like it, please be sure to like, share, comment, and subscribe. We’ll be back with more content later this week. Until then, see you next time!