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Teenagers tend to love a good prank—whether it’s covering a neighbor’s trees in toilet paper or filling a friend’s dorm room with popcorn (not that I would know anything about that, of course). But in the tense thriller The Good Neighbor, a couple of teenagers take a childish prank and turn it into a dark and dangerous—and quite possibly deadly—obsession.
The Good Neighbor follows two teenagers as they create an elaborate social experiment around their unsuspecting neighbor. Harold Grainey (James Caan) is the cranky old guy on the street—a rumored wife beater and dog killer. So Ethan (Logan Miller) convinces his new friend, Sean (Keir Gilchrist), to play a prank on him. They call it “The Haunting Project.” They rig his house with electronic equipment to make him believe he’s being haunted, and they film it all using secret cameras. But their experiment soon takes a dark turn.
The Good Neighbor is a suspenseful thriller that’s sprinkled with hints and clues about a deeper story and a tragic outcome. The problem, however, is that it’s all too clear from the start that the plan is reckless and just plain cruel: breaking into an old man’s home, installing cameras to watch his every move, doing damage to his property, and most likely causing him mental anguish in the process. Still, Ethan thinks nothing of the pain he’s causing; he sees Mr. Grainey as somehow deserving it—just because he’s old and crabby, because kids in the neighborhood suspect him of all kinds of horrible behavior. Instead, he thinks of how famous this experiment will make him—how many people will see his work and admire his genius. And that makes him a pretty deplorable character.
Sean, meanwhile, is the one with the conscience. Though he uses his dad’s money to set the whole thing up, he still seems uncomfortable with it from the beginning—and he becomes more and more uncomfortable as the project continues. Still, he allows himself to be talked into continuing—to coming back day after day to watch their horrible experiment play out.
Apparently, these kids sit in Ethan’s room and watch their neighbor as he does little more than sit in a chair for several weeks—and that time eventually starts to drag. It’s a lot of talk, a lot of footage of an old man wandering around his house, and a lot of teenage bickering. The story simply doesn’t move along quickly enough—and although it has its moments of suspense and drama, they often get lost in teenage monotony.
The Good Neighbor is more than just a teen horror movie. It’s a suspenseful psychological thriller. But the immature characters and the dragging story detract from the tension and drama.
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