Movie Review: The Boy Next Door (2015) seen in theatres, on DVD and Netflix

Thriller/Horror: not recommended for young children; scenes of intense violence, coarse language, nudity, sexuality and sexual situations

This movie follows a teacher, (played by Jennifer Lopez,) who reluctantly succumbs to the advances of a young man who is her son’s best friend. He eventually gets transferred into her class and begins stalking her after she admits that their encounter was a mistake. Despite numerous pleas for him to leave her alone, he pursues her relentlessly eventually putting herself and her family as well as her career in jeopardy.

In my opinion, this is the stereotypical trope of “man/woman, (but in this case, it’s a man,) does a good deed for the person he/she is trying to impress only for that man/woman to continuously show up and impress him/her with their ability to do things.” In most movies I’ve seen, the main character is shown to have problems in their own relationship which forces the man/woman to attempt to seduce the main character despite that main character’s apprehension because “it’s not right, I’m married, how will this effect my career?” ETC. Despite this, the antagonist’s attempts at seducing the main character eventually over shadow their good judgement forcing them to willingly go through with the sexual act. Upon realizing the mistake the main character has made in allowing the act to occur, he/she tries calmly to end the relationship only for the antagonist to go on a rampage until he/she gets what they want. This formula usually is shown to have a predictable ending either involving the arrest or the murder of the man/woman who at first attempted to seduce the main character. I’ve seen a lot of movies with this exact formula and therefore, this is nothing new to me. In fact, this movie perfectly sums up that formula. It basically is just a matter of who ends up playing the part of the good person and the bad person. As this trope was seen throughout this film, there really wasn’t any good standout scenes. To me it was the stereotypical man getting jealous after a woman eventually gives in despite apprehension for a sexual encounter and then the man, not wanting to take no for an answer, tries to kill the woman as he believes if he can’t have her, no one can. As I said before, the ending to most of these movies usually sees the bad guy killed in some way or arrested. Well, this movie ends in a death for the bad guy.

This movie really had it’s ups and downs. Now I know I said that it took me five years to get over the mental trauma that was my first relationship which would mean that it started in 2014. I made a mistake however. My therapy sessions only started in the summer of 2015. As this movie was released in February of that year, I had not started my therapy and was still going through the belief that my ex was stalking my family and that there was basically no such thing as heterosexual relationships. I lived through a period of horror in my teenage years which was brought on by the concept of sexual preference to say the least. It basically had been a while up to that point where I had actually started to once again realize that woman can fall in love with men and that heterosexuality still existed in the real world. I believe that more that this movie was a quiet start to things getting back to normal even more than my therapy. I was able to see it first hand. For this, I have to give this movie props.

However, the biggest fail I have to attribute this movie is the casting of Jennifer Lopez in the lead role. Don’t get me wrong. She’s not a bad actress. The thing about her is that most people think she’s the hottest woman in the world where I believe her to be less than average. She’s not what I would call attractive. I don’t want to comment on her age because I think she’s younger than mom and if I call her old, then obviously I believe mom is old too. However, for some reason, mom loves her and thinks she is gorgeous. I honestly don’t see it. I believe the main role could have been given to someone other than her. I honestly don’t know what the big deal is about her. She’s no one I would ever date or have sexual relations with but at the same time, I have respect her a little since mom likes her…I don’t know why this is. To show you how little she turns me on, I was able to watch the sex scenes involving her as if they were non sexual scenes. I wasn’t turned on or making dirty comments in my head like I normally do.

I think this movie hit home with what I believed to be my problem as I was going through the supposed trauma in my teenage years. Though this was never agreed with by anybody, I came to the conclusion that my issues stemmed from bottling up my emotions anytime something bothered me out of fear that saying/doing what I wanted to do would obviously get me in trouble. In most cases, the start of my anxiety attacks would be me quietly playing out scenarios in my head if I would let loose on what was happening. Most times, it would lead to yelling matches back and forth and really bad violence sometimes even resulting in police involvement or even death to the person involved in my head. However, I obviously never actually committed any crime or hurt anybody or yelled at anybody. I have to be honest in saying I would not be able to do this if I ever did and mom found out because there would be trouble. Now, the guy in this movie did not bottle up his emotions at all. He didn’t care if he sexually harassed Jennifer Lopez or that he may have killed or severely injured her son’s bully, he just did it because unlike me, his character doesn’t give a damn about anybody. Now truth be told, this did not make it easy on him. He ended up dying at the end of this film in a fiery explosion but maybe if I took his example and not bottled up my emotions all these years, I never would have had mental problems. Having said that, years later at least I have the respect of my family and friends where this guy didn’t have anything so I’m kind of glad that I didn’t go that route.

For those people who are fans of Jennifer Lopez, please stay tuned for my next at home movie review, (hence a movie that I did not see in theatres,) on the 2005 comedy “Maid in Manhattan.”

Jennifer Lopez can thank mom for the rating I’m about to give this movie as it would otherwise have been 0 out of 10 if I didn’t respect the fact that she admires her as an actress, (I think she’s just being nice as I’m sure she hates her too as she’s not attractive.) I want to make it perfectly clear that my rating has absolutely nothing to do with how well Jennifer Lopez supposedly does it because truth be told, she obviously doesn’t do it well as I was unable to enjoy the sex scene in this movie because she’s ugly as hell….but out of respect for mom, I will give this movie the following rating.

Movie rating: 7 out of 10

This is purely because I want to earn brownie points with mom and I feel like giving a movie that her favourite actress was in a 0 out of 10 is doing her a disservice. I know she would probably prefer a 10 out of 10 but I just cannot rate Jennifer Lopez that high as she is super ugly as hell.

Hopefully “Maid in Manhattan” is better. We’ll just have to wait and see