Neighbor Review

2nd August 2013

By Epock.

Reading ‘The scariest killer since Hannibal Lecter’ put me in high spirits as I settled in to watch the latest contribution from independent American film-maker Robert A. Masciantonio. Having made a suitably successful tour of the film festival circuit in 2009 Neighbor has been praised for diverging from the general realms of violent pornography common with these style films and depicting something far more smart and edgy. This warm praise for Neighbor however turned out to be completely without foundation and my hopeful spirits were swiftly put aside to be replaced with a sense of foreboding that this was going to be the longest ninety minutes of my life.

What little plot can be found in this film tells of a callous killer on a psychopathic jaunt through suburbia. Throughout her trip America Olivo’s imaginatively named ‘The Girl’ employs her seemingly in-exhaustive imagination to use mundane household items to inflict pointless and violent acts of sadism on her innocent victims. With so many films exploring similar themes it becomes apparent that Neighbor spends most of its time searching for innovative ways to inflict pain including a particularly brutal, albeit novel, application of a glass stirrer to a gentleman – Singapore Slings will never be the same again.

Much of the time spent watching Neighbor is simply in anticipation of plot progression, character development or guiltily attempting to guess the next act of wanton violence (a ninety-percent hit rate I hasten to add so we can tack predictability onto the end of the con list). The rest of the viewing time is spent is attempting to unravel what is happening; what is imagination and when in the shuffled time line this is, or isn’t, happening. Confused? Get used to it. Unlike similarly non-linear productions like Pulp Fiction or Memento, Neighbor fails to ever really explain itself, leading the viewer deeper into the pointless and sadistic plot. The complete lack of any compelling story line totally fails to justify the abundant gratuitous violence. From start to finish Neighbor is devoid of any intelligence or particularly interesting stylistic attributes. It is at best, sadistic and bloody pornography; not for your everyday voyeur.

The usual unrealistic and medically misrepresented gore along with some unconvincing Z-list screaming and some admittedly nifty blood-squirting gadgetry puts Neighbor easily among the ranks of C-movie gore-fests churned out bi-weekly with little or no marketing campaign. If this is what you like then Neighbor is probably one of the more imaginatively sadistic films you could choose from this genre, otherwise I would give this one a wide berth and under absolutely no circumstances watch it with Grandma.

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