Delayed Reaction: The Good Neighbor

The Pitch: Some teens try to trick a mean neighbor into thinking his house is haunted then suspect that he may be up to something more nefarious.

I saw a trailer for this a while ago that got me excited for it. It looked like it was flipping the script on Paranormal Activity and turning it into Disturbia. That looked fun. It turns out that this is more of a twisty thriller with a healthy dose of teen problems. That isn't a bad thing, but it's not what I was looking forward to.

James Caan gives a good performance as the neighbor, but the movie does nothing with it. Caan's odd behavior is mostly seen as curious, not dangerous. Having the police officer check out the locked basement early on took out all the tension from the mystery. The court scenes had a similar effect. Showing the trial in the future immediately removes several possibilities for where the story is going, and then it just annoyed me to not know what the trial was for. The film doesn't commit to a POV, so I ended up being annoyed by both of the boys doing the experiment. The twist at the end would've played really well if the rest of the movie had been better. Instead, it's like hearing the punchline to a joke that someone kept messing up in the setup.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend