The Boy Next Door
Director: Rob Cohen
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, Kristin Chenoweth
91 mins; Class 15;
KRS Releasing Ltd

The so-called ‘psycho-stalker’ genre has spawned many a great film over the past few decades - Martin Scorsese’s seminal Taxi Driver (1976); the Fatal Attraction (1987) phenomenon; Julia Roberts in peril in Sleeping with the Enemy (1990); and the tension-filled flatmate-from-hell tale Single White Female (1992).

These are all examples of what made the genre popular towards the end of the last century.

Taxi Driver is indubitably the sublime one from the above list. This week’s The Boy Next Door falls squarely in the ‘ridiculous’ camp, with Jennifer Lopez simply unable to bring anything to this unwelcome addition to the genre.

Lopez stars as Claire, a separated high school literature teacher charmed by the polite and mildly flirtatious attention showered on her by her new, charismatic 19-year-old neighbour Noah (Ryan Guzman).

It is not long, however before Noah’s behaviour becomes a tad obsessive and Claire makes a huge error of judgment which she can’t extricate herself from.

There is little that is done right in this tiresome attempt to revive the genre. From the offset, when they meet one another under Claire’s damaged garage door there is zero chemistry between Lopez and Guzman, despite the fact that the first thing we see of Noah is his impressive bicep.

That Claire is immediately impressed by Noah’s knowledge of the classics is laughable,so much so the internet has been chatting incessantly about a scene in which Noah delightedly gives Claire a rare ‘first’ edition of Homer’s The Iliad –written about 2,000 years before the printing press was even invented.

A new low for J-lo

This lazy attention to facts is emblematic of the faults of Barbara Curry’s script as a whole. It is a combination of bland story-telling, dialogue rife with tired clichés and paper-thin characterisation.

Noah’s character is one-note – not helped at all by Guzman’s wooden performance, with hurried explanations of his tragic background that is supposed to give an insight into his character, leading to Claire carrying out investigations into his life for all of two minutes before she realises something is not quite right. The fact that he smashes his fist against a wall in rage the morning after their illicit encounter when she decides to leave should have been a clue.

As for Lopez’s character, it is hard to believe that a woman who looks like her with her perfect hair, impeccable make-up and that body needs to turn to someone less than half her age for affection.

And finally, her protestations to her best friend – and boss – Vickie (Kristen Chenoweth, best thing about the film) that she can’t go to the police sound hollow. Noah is 19 so she can’t be accused of abuse of minors.

Instead, Claire spends her time fighting off Noah’s advances, which come across more like an annoyance than any serious threat so that there is no sense of peril at all. This results in a completely tension-free and ennui-filled experience.

Blunders like Claire sleeping with her windows wide open, despite having a stalker for a neighbour don’t help, while an overblown, never-ending denouement feels like an attempt to inject life into the story. It doesn’t.

Even the inevitable hot, steamy encounter between the two comes off as a damp squib, the coupling nothing more than the pair sharing smouldering looks while breathing heavily at one another and a series of not-terribly-erotic close-ups of their admittedly well-toned bodies.

It is all done so much by-the-numbers that there is absolutely nothing sexy about it all.

Since 1998’s Out of Sight, when Lopez used her smouldering persona and bona fide acting chops opposite George Clooney to remarkable effect, the actress has appeared in a series of middling comedies and dramas, but this signals a new (J) low for her.

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