Good Neighbors is Not as Advertised
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Good Neighbors is supposed to be, according to the trailer, a serial killer thriller involving three neighboring apartments. It’s not. It is a serial killer ‘dramedy’.
Written by James “Crypticpsych” Lasome
July 23, 2011
Movie Trailer
Image Gallery
Release: September 14, 2010 (Toronto Int. Film Festival), July 29, 2011 (US Limited)
Directed by: Jacob Tierney
Written by: Jacob Tierney (screenplay), Chrystine Brouillet (Novel)
Starring:
Jay Baruchel as Victor
Scott Speedman as Spencer
Emily Hampshire as Louise
Micheline Lanctôt as Mme Gauthier
It’s 1995 in Montreal. Spencer (Scott Speedman), a wheelchair-bound widower, and his upstairs neighbor Louise (Emily Hampshire), a cat-loving Chinese restaurant employee, are having to deal with their overbearing French neighbor, Mme Gauthier (Micheline Lanctôt) and the awkward intrusion of their new upstairs neighbor, the overly talkative Victor (Jay Baruchel). Meanwhile, a serial killer is rumored to be running rampant in the area, brutally murdering and raping young women. Louise thinks it wise to have Victor walk her home from her job given the circumstances, but she pretty clearly has no romantic interest in him. Meanwhile Spencer gets suspicious of how close Victor is getting to the two of them and responds to Victor’s friendship overtures with some hostility. As the body count rises and violence hits their own apartment building, the relationship between the tenants will be tested and their true personalities will come out.
Good Neighbors (or Good Neighbours) will probably
disappoint those expecting a thriller or a slasher movie, given the
above plot synopsis. This is not a horror movie AT ALL. Instead, the
film’s more a dark 
relationship dramedy… that just
happens to be also
about murder and a serial killer. None of the serial killer’s murders
are actually physically shown with the audience only seeing the
aftermath of one of them in deep shadow. In fact, the only extended
murder sequence in the entire film is played for comedy. That scene is
very well done, but it’s probably not what a horror fan is expecting.
That’s not necessarily a BAD thing, just badly advertised.
Instead of focusing on the grisly details of the serial killer’s actions, the film, an update of Chrystine Brouillet’s 1982 novel Chère voisine, is more about the interplay between the tenants of the apartment building. The story is told in a way that is compelling, and the relationship between the characters is interesting. The movie is structured as being told over five months in these people’s lives. As time goes on, all the characters either have secrets revealed about them or learn/think they learn things about each other, building up to an inspired climactic fight as darker aspects of their personalities are seen. If Good Neighbors were structured as “figure out who the killer is before he/she kills everyone”, it would have been stereotypical and possibly even boring. Instead, we have a tale where it is known who the serial killer is halfway into the movie, and the rest is the relationships and conclusion unfurling.
Scott Speedman and Emily Hampshire
give multidimensional, unique
performances. Speedman seems to be able to make Spencer kind and
sincere, possibly even mildly lustful, toward Louise as well as brash,
arrogant, and suspicious to Victor. Hampshire’s Louise ably handles
being the key element that factors into just about every aspect of the
plot and plays an admittedly bizarre character well. It’s not every day
an actress has to play a woman THIS unusually attracted to cats, after
all. Otherwise, she’s able to play apathy, grief, sexuality, and other
emotions equally well. As for being multi-dimensional, well, let’s just
say that it’s saying something that she’s probably the most likeable
character in the film even with some of the things she does, and leave
it at that.
The biggest detractor in Good Neighbors is Victor. While Spencer and Louise have great chemistry, Victor is perpetually awkward. Victor is SO awkward and makes such bizarre decisions that he comes off as grating and unlikeable. It’s not clear whether the blame for this can be laid at Jay Baruchel’s feet or if he is just playing the character as written. Either way, the character is so dense to obvious signals from both Spencer and Louise and so unnecessarily neurotic that it takes almost the entire film for anyone to relate to him at all. If he weren’t one of the three main characters, this probably wouldn’t be a problem. As it is the movie suffers from the amount of screen time he gets.
In the end, don’t go see Good
Neighbors expecting to be
scared or hoping for blood and gore as there is fairly little of either
in this non-horror flick. Instead, give it a look as a solid, mostly
well-acted dark relationship dramedy with some interesting twists and
turns to its plot.
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