mbs Review of Good Neighbours

Good Neighbours (2010)

good slow building suspense almost offset by near zero resolution at the end

[6 August 2011]

Film has a good beginning...and an even better middle as it slowly but surely builds up the suspense at who is or who might be the murderer rapist prowling the neighborhood at night. However the film almost comes completely crashing down by an ending that not only fails to resolve the central question at hand--but fails to resolve the basic conflict at the movie's heart. Which of the two guys will Emily Hampshire's Lucy decide to trust more??? Well the movie actually does resolve this question but only in the most blunt way possible leaving open the question that Lucy had been asking for just about the whole movie! (When the movie was over i asked one of the handful of other people in the theater if we were just supposed to assume that so and so was the killer the whole time because the movie doesn't actually provide a concrete answer to that most basic question so i started looking for clues in that ending--i think the answer is actually there but it still feels kind of unresolved to me.) Film is worth checking out tho if only for the suspense and the very nicely jaw dropping turn or two the story takes as it builds its case both for and against its three characters. It should be worth noting that none of the three major characters are exactly the nice normal people they would appear to be. Oh they may or may not be serial murdering rapists but they're also certainly not good neighbors either despite the fact that they do always seem to be there for one another. The two men in the movie--both Jay Brauchel and Scott Speedman give excellent turns here--Speedman doing a nice variation on passive aggressive jerk and Baruchel doing a nice variation on his usual nervous but overly nice good guy. Both actors are far more subtle with the turns of their various characters then you'd think from past examples of both actor's work and they both work surprisingly well together too. (The dinner party where the two are sort of forced to make conversation with one another while waiting for Lucy to arrive is very nicely played and very much filled with good underlying tension between the two) The film however really rests on Lucy's shoulders tho and the film kind of rises and sets based on what you know about her character. Emily Hampshire--an actress whom i knew absolutely nothing about beforehand does a solid job playing a very chilly character here, one that's so cold and hard to like that i feel as if that remoteness kind of rubs off on the actress playing her...so that i can't actually tell if its a very good performance by the actress or not. I suppose that kind of uncertainty and ambiguity is exactly what helps the film overall. The film really is quite watchable the whole way through tho and is nicely played--even if the ending does remain a slight question mark.