THE BOY NEXT DOOR

US, 2015, 91 minutes, Colour.
Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, Ian Nelson, John Corbett, Kristin Chenoweth, Lexi Atkins, Hill Harper, Jack Wallace.
Directed by Rob Cohen.

Not a romantic comedy. Rather, it comes from the early years of Blumhouse productions who came into their own several years later with some classic horror stories including Get Out and The Invisible Man.

This is the kind of erotic comedy that could be described as trashy – and Jennifer Lopez did get a Razzie nomination for her performance. If many audiences were set a task to write a screenplay about a sinister but charming-looking boy next door and an older woman about to divorce her husband, most would come up with something like this.

Jennifer Lopez teaches classics, including Homer, at the local college. Her husband, John Corbett, has been unfaithful on his work travels. The couple separated. They are both devoted to their son who has respiratory problems and is bullied at school. A young man, the type who is often described as a hunk, arrives next door after his parents have died, with excellent references from his previous school. He has come ostensibly to look after his ailing uncle.

Of course, he infiltrates the family, a moment of seduction with the mother, further alienating the son from his father, brutal in comments at first towards the father.

The young man is revealed as obsessive and, as the film progresses, beyond obsessive. He puts the mother into all kinds of compromising situations, even for disturbing her classroom with 100 or more photos of their sexual encounter which he had also videoed. He fakes an application to be in her class, further turns the son against his father, giving up his love for computers to take on boxing. There is a scene at school where the next door boy is extremely violent when the son is attacked in the corridor. Also in the picture is the vice principal, played by Kristin Chenoweth, who was the confidante of the mother but, ultimately, challenging the young man and suffering for it.

There is also a scene where the father takes his son on a driving lesson – and, of course, the brakes have been cut. The mother later is suspicious and checks with a mechanic about the young man’s parents dying in a similar kind of accident.

The film builds up to a highly emotive, highly violent confrontation with the family, the young man obsessed still despite all the violence. It takes a while for the father and son, tied up, to be free and to help their mother in the middle of a conflagration to defeat the boy next door.

New paragraph surprisingly, the film was directed by Rob Cohen, director of a number of action films and the originator of the Fast and the Furious franchise.