The Boy Next Door
DIRECTOR: Rob Cohen
CAST: Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, John Corbett, Ian Nelson, Kristin Chenoweth
CLASSIFICATION: 16 HLNS
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes
RATING: **
If you’ve seen the deliciously bad trailer for The Boy Next Door, you already know some of the film’s best – which is to say its worst – lines. “I love your mom’s cookies” may go down in history as the most hilariously inappropriate double-entendre ever spoken by one high school student to another after the first one has slept with his schoolmate’s mother.
That is the premise of this future camp classic, in which Jennifer Lopez’s schoolteacher character (pictured) has ill-advised rebound sex with a studly student (Guzman) after catching her husband Corbett) cheating on her. It should be noted that, at 45, Lopez remains in fine form.
That this lucky student, Noah, is said to be almost 20 makes it only slightly less icky than it sounds, even though it’s never adequately explained why the kid is still taking AP classes when most others his age would be halfway through college.
It’s just one of the film’s many improbabilities, which will either flow over you like water, if you let them, or irritate like an itchy wool sweater, if you fight them.
Very quickly, Noah is revealed to be a psychotic stalker who won’t take no for an answer when Lopez’s Claire comes to her senses and tries to break off their relationship. “I will never, ever,” he tells Claire, “going to let you go.” (This laughably ungrammatical statement may explain why he has been held back at school.)
Before long, Noah has transformed into Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction.
The Boy Next Door rushes from psychological thriller territory into the realm of horror film. At times, Noah is like a distant cousin of Norman Bates, just with better abs.
Though its studio, Blumhouse Productions, is best known for the Paranormal Activity series, The Boy Next Door plays best as unintentional comedy. It’s a movie about a young man with an unhealthy mother fixation, but if you go into it expecting something closer to Mommie Dearest than Psycho, you’ll have a much better time. – Washington Post