This review contains SPOILERS but it doesn't matter because you shouldn't waste your time seeing this anyway, LOL.
Just when you thought the found footage genre couldn't get lower, we get "The Good Neighbor"--a micro-budget film about an old man being stalked by his teenage neighbors who illegally spy on him with cameras and try to convince him that his house is haunted. The premise sounds okay, I suppose, but unfortunately this movie is so boring you'll wish it had more scenes of "The Good Neighbor" snoozing in his chair.
Why is this crap called The Good Neighbor? It isn't about the old man being a good neighbor or a bad neighbor or any kind of neighbor at all. It's about some spoiled brats tormenting him with video surveillance and creating a fake haunting to create a documentary that, even if it was completed, would have been so illegal that they'd never be able to release it to anyone. What a plot. Why not call it "The Bad Neighbors"?
Let's get straight to the chase. The acting is horrible. And I mean horrible, like first year acting school horrible. The writing is also horrible. These kids who live next door to this old man supposedly have all this technology to create the illusion that the old man's house is haunted, but they do nothing with it. Sure, a screen door slams (did they install a motor to it?), and the lights flicker, and the radio goes on and off, and, well, that's about it. Wouldn't this have been a gem if they took it to the limit and actually made furniture move around ala Poltergeist (as they suggested they could do) or even project holograms of ghosts or some other crazy stuff? Wouldn't that turn into something mind boggling? But no. Instead, they turn the heat off on the poor old man and shatter his window. Lucky he didn't die of pneumonia! Good job.
James Caan is great here and that's why I'm giving this crap fest a two instead of a zero. Please don't tell me this is James Caan's "comeback role". He's 76 years old and has had a distinguished career and doesn't need any "comeback". Here he does his best Michael Caine impersonation and it's actually solid work. Too bad it is lost in this drivel of a film, that's not about him but rather about beer swigging teenagers who could use a good spanking. I'm just going to assume someone involved in this mess was James Caan's great grandson or something so that I don't keep wondering why he agreed to be part of this garbage.
And the plot. Uggh. Apparently there's only one cop in this town because every time something happens, just this one cop shows up. And he's a stereotype. As is the Asian prosecuting attorney. As is the judge. As is the big crowd of people and media mob outside the courtroom after the trial, a trial that involves the death of some loner old man that nobody cared about before he died yet suddenly the entire world seems to be on the courtroom steps in support of him. LOL. As are the titles to the chapters as if this two penny film is as important as some big budget Quentin Tarantino epic.
This movie might have been saved with some final surprise: like the corpse of the boy's father rising up through the old man's basement floor or something similar to the end of Friday the 13th or Carrie. But no. They were too lazy to even think up an ending. Instead we get a long shot of the snotty nosed little brat who orchestrated the entire thing standing on the court room steps as he's surrounded by a stereotypical mob consisting of, and I'm not kidding, someone from every ethnic background on the planet. I can't even go on, lol. I think you get the picture. Two stars. Probably the worst movie I've seen this year.
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