4/10

The newest stalker thriller from Rob Cohen hits moments of subtle suspense, but it ultimately fails from a lack of unpredictability, and riddles itself in tired cliches. Claire Simmons (Jennifer Lopez) is a high school english teacher who is starting over with her teenage son after her husband is caught cheating on her. She meets the grandson of her next door neighbor, Noah, a twenty year old attractive guy who instantly has an attraction to Claire. One night of passion leads to a lifetime of regrets, as Noah blackmails Claire into the kind of relationship that will ruin her career and her family. “The Boy Next Door” is more of what we have come to expect from these films. It feels like a glorified Lifetime Channel movie that was talked into the big screen treatment as long as we cast a Hollywood A-lister getting down and dirty. The film is trash, but i can at least say it was entertaining trash along the lines of the “So bad it’s good” films. The movie is rated R, and it doesn’t use those limits until a third act which turns the film into a borderline horror film. The last scene of the film does kind of end anti-climatically, but if anything, it goes against the grain of showing the tired “Three weeks later” shot. The acting is what ultimately drives this film to the bottom of the early year list. Noah is a good villain with some creative lines to drive the audience angry. The problem is that the acting of Ryan Guzman just isn’t experienced enough to make his psychotic turn feel warranted. With the wrong actor, a turn like this can push the second half of the film to laughable heights, and that’s sadly the result of this one. Lopez is OK enough, but it just feels like JLO in a movie we’ve seen her in hundreds of times. Her wardrobe in particular is nothing any mother with good taste would wear around other people. Her pajamas alone looked like something off of a Danielle Steele cover. Lopez did serve as a co-producer on the film, and the script feels like a victim of a couple rewrites. The movie warrants Claire’s decision to sleep with this boy by making several things awfully convenient for the audience. Noah is twenty years old, so he’s not technically a minor. Her husband cheated on her, so it’s OK that she slept with another man. If this film had any guts, it would’ve written Lopez just as guilty and wanting as her male counterpart. “The night” never feels like it’s done anything negative to her except when Noah is blackmailing her. She gets over everything quite easily. There is also nudity by everyone except Lopez, but it’s OK for the film to show an obscene scene with Noah “Using his hands”. It’s like the movie didn’t one to explore one thing, and then did something just as bad. Another big problem comes in the form of obvious foreshadowing. We see Noah as a car expert. Gee, i wonder if this will come in handy later?? We see Claire’s son Kevin as a teenager with heart problems. Gee, i wonder if this will come in handy later? We hear about Noah’s parents dying in a fiery crash. We know from the film’s trailer that Noah is a little out there, so gee i wonder if this will come in handy later? Overall, the movie is silly. I don’t think anyone associated with the movie doesn’t know that. The good news is that the silly tones mixed with the edge of your seats suspense creates a third act that is at least worthy of sitting through the previous predictable first seventy minutes. I wouldn’t say this movie is anything more than a girls night in with a couple of drinks. Save your cash and wait a couple months. “The Boy Next Door” is not a good film by any standards. It did however give me something that “Blackhat”, “Mortdecai”, and “Taken 3” did not; an entertaining enough pace from a director who knew the very identity of the movie he was making.