Review: The Boy Next Door

There's very little to expect going into The Boy Next Door, and the low-budget, gender-reversing take on Fatal Attraction lives down to those expectations.

The filmmakers set the table pretty quickly: Claire Peterson (Jennifer Lopez) has been separated from her cheating husband Garrett (John Corbett) for nearly a year. He's eager to reconcile, their teenage son Kevin (Ian Nelson) wants his parents back together, but Claire is unsure. She's feeling lost and lonely and at her most vulnerable when nineteen-year-old Noah (Ryan Guzman) moves in next door, all bulging biceps and muscle tees, offering to fix a wonky garage door, befriending Kevin, and dropping quotes from The Iliad as deliberately as he evades talking about an "accident" in his past.

Claire finds herself hot and bothered by the young buck, stealing glances at his buff bod as he repairs a car or as he stands naked in his room. He knows she's watching and, when Garrett and Kevin leave for a weekend camping trip, Noah and Claire yield to their passions. The cold light of day, however, finds a remorseful Claire telling Noah their one-night stand was a one-time mistake. Noah will not be ignored - he finagles his way into her high-school literature class, latches on to Kevin like a re-attached Siamese twin, and does everything in his power to make her life a living hell for the sole purpose of making her the queen in his wackadoo version of reality.

As in Fatal Attraction, The Crush, The Temp, and many other movies of its kind, the dance between the guilty spouse and the spurned lover spirals into 100% pure lunacy with a finale that manages to feature both a conflagration and an eye-gouging amidst the fake-outs. Guzman - well, I'm not sure what he was going for here, but it's akin to a sketch show version of a psychopath. There is no doubt that Noah is cuckoo from second one, and Guzman delivers every line as if the audience was lobotomised. He may have been trying for the type of cheesy camp that makes a bad movie good (see Showgirls), but he's operating solo, no one else got the memo.

Lopez, who also produced the film, shouldn't settle for such trifle. She does a capable job and looks beautiful throughout, which may be enough for her fans.

The Boy Next Door

Directed by: Rob Cohen

Written by: Barbara Curry

Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, Kristin Chenoweth, John Corbett, Ian Nelson