The Boy Next Door

Jennifer Lopez has serious beefcake issues in this lazy, low-budget, not-as-much-fun-as-it-should-be potboiler.

Following the departure of her cheating husband (John Corbett), schoolteacher Claire (Lopez) should be throwing herself into work. Instead, she throws herself into the well-toned arms of neighbouring hunk Noah (Ryan Guzman), the kind of all-American kid who likes to quote Homer, shoot oranges off a log with automatic weapons and slowly peel off his tank top in front of open windows.

But when Claire opts not to go back for seconds, Noah’s inner psycho is unsurprisingly revealed, leading to the sort of wall-punching, brakeline-snipping, watch-you-while-you-sleep stalker shenanigans that were all the rage back in the early ’90s.

Props to director Rob Cohen for making a gender-flipped ‘Fatal Attraction’. But ‘The Boy Next Door’ really should be a lot juicier – it’s only in the closing moments that the film finally cuts loose, going out with the kind of gory, goofy, over-the-top bang that will win it fans among the so-bad-it’s-good crowd.​