Oscar season is coming to an end and studios have stopped releasing films geared for the year’s most prestigious award show. Enter “The Boy Next Door,” an occasionally enjoyable film in its over-the-top silliness that otherwise comes up short in nearly every department.
Claire Peterson (Jennifer Lopez) is a typical high school teacher who recently split up with her husband and lives alone with her son, Kevin (Ian Nelson). Claire (and everyone watching this film) takes several extended peeks at her new neighbor’s toned biceps and it soon becomes obvious that she is inevitably going to make some poor decisions involving not-so-typical high school student Noah Sandborn (Ryan Guzman), also known as “The Boy Next Door.”
After an awkward and forced love-making scene, things quickly go downhill for Claire. Her job, family, friends and the cars of her family and friends are all in the sights of Noah in his crazed, psychotic and unintentionally humorous rampage of stalking and obsession.
The lack of character development makes it hard to take several scenes in the movie seriously. The creative and eerily confident manner in which Noah tries to be with Claire brings some redeeming qualities to the film. Yet, Noah is not relatable in any way.
“The Boy Next Door” was a mess of aggressively creepy one-liners and predictable jump scares. The first five minutes of the film jumped around so much that it resembled a movie trailer. Unless it was going for scene after scene of overly cliched humor, the film as a whole was a failure.
