The Good Neighbor

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After a fairly lacklustre start, The Good Neighbour turns into an imaginative, tense and gripping film. A genre let's face it that has been done to death in recent years, I can think of so many similar films, but this one actually does a great job. The scenario is a little different, you get to see two sides of the story, it's more in the psychological drama genre, it's tense and suspenseful. It is very well acted, everyone plays their part well, it would have been easy to overact. The final showdown was good, but I wish they'd have made it a little more suspenseful, it was a little underdone. Overall I thought this was a very good film, very watchable. 7/10

James Caan could not save this dog, that tells you all you need to know. The stereotypical ADHD kid and the sullen repressed teen are so poorly acted I thought it was a comedy. Nothing new or inventive here. The plot had so many holes it was ridiculous. SPOILER: They lived across the street but did not know the neighbor (who had helped them in a time of need) had a wife dying of cancer that he loved. Why lock the basement at all? He fixes a small hole in the driveway immediately but not the screen door that has been broken for years. They invest in thousands of dollars in video equipment but no audio, and they must have bought cheap crap because it always went off line when they needed it the most. There was no suspense, no action, no interesting characters, and no drama. Tell the director and actors to keep their food industry jobs.

Really? This movie is a complete waste of time. The premise sounded interesting, but the plot leaves you utterly unsatisfied. The so-much-wished-and hoped-for twist, like e.g. the "good neighbor" himself turning into the prankster or something of the like, it never comes. Instead, we get a foreseeable plot, no real twists; boredom to the extreme, with endless pointless conversations between typical 2016 teenage boys; extremely, and I mean EXTREMELY unlikable lead characters, i.e. said boys; hours of utter stupidity: Main character carries a gun when entering the neighbor's house to fix a camera... I mean, really; most annoying of all: A movie that only for a very short amount of time takes advantage of the entire screen estate; mostly we see a small box with black stripes not only at top and bottom, no, but also left and right. OK, we get it, it's the image of a camera, but wouldn't the text on the screen suffice to explain that?! a fantastic James Caan, who does his best to save this wreck from sinking - albeit unsuccessfully. A real confirmation for my feeling that movies from around 2005 and later with high probability suck, despite the names on the cast lists.