There is no logical reason why I saw this film other than I wanted to review a bad movie that came out last month. I had no desire to see this, but I did anyway. I enjoy telling people how awful bad movies are, and recommending that you don’t see them. That being said, this is a bad movie. “The Boy Next Door” is directed by Rob Cohen and stars Jennifer Lopez and Ryan Guzman.
Newly separated mother and teacher Claire Peterson (Lopez) is in their garage when she and her son meet Noah (Guzman). He assists them in fixing their garage door and immediately out of nowhere befriends her son. He soon becomes a regular around the Peterson house, coming to dinner and totally flirting with Claire. Eventually, they have sex. Claire feels regret and makes the supposed almost twenty year old adult/boy angry. He then seeks to have his revenge. He goes to her high school classes and begins to stalk her.
Obviously, Jennifer Lopez is no grade A actress. She’s not a good actress; we all know that. In this film, she gives such a bad performance. It was like watching a classic tv show mom. She had no depth or emotion or anything. However, Ryan Guzman gives the worst performance of the entire film. He played the everyday jock guy just fine–in a really cliché kind of way–but when he “goes crazy”, it’s laughable. I did laugh! It was like watching a bad impersonation of The Joker or of Jack Nicholson from The Shining. He shook his head back and forth like a dog and talked like his balls were being squeezed. The young kid who plays her son also does a terrible job. Every performance is awful and one note.
As far as the story and script; it’s bad. The characters are very flat with no depth or anything that makes you like them. Everyone is all together unlikable. The dialogue is extremely cliché and completely annoying. Nothing about this film is well made. It’s incredibly lazy on every front. The cinematography is horrendous. Nearly every shot was either to far away from the subject, or it was annoying shaky cam. It is also poorly edited, particularly the first thirty to fourth minutes. Everything during that time frame is rushed. The film doesn’t take any time, it all just happens. The director of this film is awful. He clearly doesn’t know how to direct actors or how to create tension.
This film is extremely convoluted. Nothing in this movie makes sense. After Lopez and Guzman’s characters have sex, she feels guilty and goes on about how it was wrong for then to have sex. In the beginning of the film, he states that he is almost twenty. This makes him nineteen years old. He is a legal adult. There was nothing wrong with what happened. It was completely legal! There are many lapses of logic throughout. In particular, one scene when Claire’s sister sees a photo of them having sex, she randomly calls him a “psychopath”. All Claire did was show her a picture. From a single image this lady deduced this young boy was a psycho. It was completely legal! It’s not like he was underage!
There have been many good films made about creepy stalkers. This isn’t one of them. This is geared towards stupid people who only want to see Jennifer Lopez get naked. Unfortunately for them, she doesn’t. For some reason this film got an R rating. Several “f” bombs and a brief showing of someone’s naked a**. At least put in more “f” bombs. At least show more nudity. At least go all in and take advantage of you’re R rating. If your’e insistent on making an R rated film then make use of the rating. Otherwise, this is basically a PG-13 movie with just a few more f-words that pushed the rating higher.
“The Boy Next Door” is a messy, boring, lifeless, and flat film that is a complete waste of time. It fails to make a case for why it deserved an R rating, and doesn’t fulfill what most thought it would be. If you’re looking for a creepy stalker film, watch Prisoners or something. There are plenty of great creepy thrillers. In the end, this is a horribly made, terribly shot, badly acted, stupid, and nonsensical piece of January garbage. {0/5 stars }
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