The Boy Next Door stars Jennifer Lopez as a conflicted woman who gets romantically involved with her young neighbor, Ryan Guzman — a tryst with creepy and complicated consequences. Rob Cohen directed the Universal-distributed R-rated thriller, also featuring Kristin Chenoweth and John Corbett. Lopez also produced the microbudget movie, made for four million dollars and shot within 23 days. The Hollywood Reporter’s Sheri Linden says it offers “some guilty-pleasure thrills and laughs, while falling way short of its potential on both the dramatic and the camp fronts.” Though free of “any real sense of naughty indulgence” or nuance, Cohen “avoids sex-scene clichés and gives the encounter, and much of what follows, energy. … Cohen doesn’t belabor things, delivering a concise and good-looking genre piece, and making the most of a microbudget.” However, Randy Edelman and Nathan Barr’s excellent score ratchets up the dread. If only that high-tension music played against less obvious action and dialogue.” And Guzman’s Noah “quickly turns into a one-note character” opposite Lopez’s “far more complex” Claire, and Barbara Curry’s screenplay “settles into ordinary thriller territory way too soon.”
