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The Boy Next Door was directed by Rob Cohen, written by Barbara Curry, and stars Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, Ian Nelson, Kristin Chenoweth, and John Corbett. It’s about a middle-aged woman who falls for her new, young next-door neighbor, who’s not the dreamboat she thought he’d be.

The Plot: Erotic thrillers peaked in the early 1990s, when an unending number of Fatal Attraction clones were released in theaters and on late night cable. Curry’s script acts as though this isn’t the case, reusing the same old notes and structure without correcting the formula’s most glaring issues.

High school teacher Claire (Lopez) is in the midst of a personal crisis, with her cheating husband Garrett’s (Corbett) attempts at getting back together gumming up her efforts to move on with her son Kevin (Nelson). It’s the beginning of the school year though, so things are bound to get rougher for a while; the primary reason for that being new neighbor Noah (Guzman), who instantly makes an impression on Claire in the bland fashion of fixing a garage door and hanging out with Kevin. Naturally, Noah is also a student in Claire’s class, because writing a new scenario is hard.

Similarly convenient is the exit plan The Boy Next Door has for Kevin and Garrett, who go on a camping trip, leaving Claire’s friend Vicky (Chenoweth) as the only objector to the inevitable fling between the new acquaintances. Claire tries to backpedal on her affair, but Noah isn’t having it, and we all know how it goes from here on. That’s all Curry has in mind, as there are no subplots or supplements. It’s fine (even preferable, in my opinion) to focus on a core subject, but only when the logic is airtight, which is never the case here.

Sure, things escalate, as seen when Noah gets expelled (while still allowed on campus) but nothing much develops as time goes on, leaving whatever passed for competence to the first couple minutes.

The Characters: Broadness is a killer in this movie, as is miscasting. No one in the roster comes off as believable, but when the script’s characters resemble caricatures of those common in these films, it’s not a surprise.

Claire is supposed to be the ultimate MILF, with a grand house filled with skimpy clothing and comfy furniture (don’t ask how she can afford this as an English/literature teacher in California), but nothing gels here. Creating a path to her younger one-night stand shouldn’t be too difficult, but the script can’t help but make the leadup feel like a cartoon, as every man in The Boy Next Door is out to demean her for no reason; a cheap way to get the lonely woman in bed with Noah. It doesn’t help that Claire ignores every warning sign, and that Lopez isn’t a good actor.

Noah is whatever Curry needs him to be, as the script changes his attitude several times at the drop of a hat to create an antagonist. Even before the first 180, he’s too telegraphed, as he appears right as Claire is in need of a strong, charming, goodhearted man – three qualities he’s vastly overqualified in being. Attempts to disarm skepticism are weak, with Guzman’s gaze far too leering and the movie asserting that any guy who’s in town to give his grandfather a bone marrow transplant can’t be that bad.

Kevin and Garrett are consistent with the writing style. The former is a techy, sickly teen whose sole purpose is to get bullied and hopelessly crush on the school’s most attractive girl, an easy in for Noah. And the latter is an oblivious cheater who wants to make amends right as the neighbor enters the picture. It’s hard to tell whether all of these characters are cynical or incompetent creations. Either way, they aren’t good.

The Thrills: If the tone was campier, maybe The Boy Next Door could’ve reveled in its chaos, which is occasionally entertaining, if simultaneously overblown in execution and rote on paper.

Seductions are normally handled with some kind of trashy pleasure or determined cunning in movies like this. Because of the hokey script, Cohen tries for the first option, shooting the sex scene like softcore. However, this only leads to the passionate sequence to feel gross in the worst way, as Noah’s actions don’t line up with the tone. He basically forces himself on Claire while she’s tipsy, which the movie doesn’t seem to acknowledge, as she blames herself for a weak moment caused by extenuating circumstances.

Escalations are probably the best moments The Boy Next Door has to offer, but those still come with an asterisk. While Noah’s efforts to manipulate Kevin into pushing his father away to create another opportunity for romance are engaging, albeit transparent, everything else is just preposterous. Hacking Claire’s email to get himself placed in her class, saving Kevin from death, and tampering with Garrett’s car are just some of the avenues he takes throughout the second act. They all happen in rapid succession, making the lover into a grand villain instead of a circumstantial stalker.

It all goes off the rails entirely when Claire staunchly refuses to get the cops involved (I think this is where the transition from MILF to bimbo happens), even as Noah turns to kidnapping to get back into her pants. The finale is pure Hollywood, but it at least allows for some kind of angle to be taken by the director and provide a couple precious moments of cheap thrills that previously hadn’t been a part of the movie up to that point.

The Technics: Cohen’s highest achievements have been in the action and crime genres, and that’s where the majority of his time as a helmer has been spent. Relatively untested in the thriller genre, he comes away with a competent, but far less stylistically confident outing here.

Without a large budget to work with, The Boy Next Door looks like a Lifetime movie in terms of its framing, grading, and setting. That’s no fault of the director, who at least tries to create a moody lighting style in and around the two houses with gloomy, extreme blacks, and accentuated yellows and purples in the scenes set at night. In the daytime though, everything looks as bland as it really is, with the same medium shot distance, flat locations, and generic dressing shining through instantly.

Pacing is the other huge issue in the feature, but it’d be a hard one to correct. Almost every single scene contained in this movie has been done before, so it’s not unreasonable to want to get the prerequisites over with, which is the course taken here. The problem is that the conflict isn’t given time to boil, which owes to Curry’s awful script having no fat on it. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, but it’s not a story welcoming scrutiny or time to begin with.

It can border on so bad it’s good territory in content at times, but The Boy Next Door is more of a dud than a camp thriller because of its strict adherence to convention and dismal acting. Try the next house down.

24/100