There’s a point midway through Neighbor where, after sucking for a long time, it convinces you it’s about to not only stop sucking, but might actually justify the previous sucking that took place. Then it yells, “Psych!” and starts sucking all over again, and continues on sucking until the credits finally roll.
The film follows a nameless maniac who is able to invade the homes of strangers and torture them to death, because she looks like America Olivo (Bitch Slap) and doesn’t fit the whole psychotic serial killer stereotype. After we see her torture and kill a bunch of people we don’t know (including John Waters regular Mink Stole), she moves on to a bunch of characters we do know, but still care very little about. After she has tortured and killed them, we find out someone else has been arrested for her crimes, and she’s free to go on her hot-chick homicidal ways.
The generous fool in me wants to believe writer/director Robert Angelo Masciantonio was going for an American Psycho-esque satire here, but without that film’s pedigree and deliberate stylization, Neighbor adds up to little more than a series of increasingly violent acts perpetrated on the human body, climaxing with a scene where Olivo (whose performance is the film’s sole highlight) inserts and breaks a glass tube in her main victim’s (obviously rubber) penis.
As graphic as this moment is, it lacks the authenticity required to be genuinely frightening, which is ultimately the problem with the entire movie: It never earns the disgust it tries so hard to invoke. —Allan Mott
These sequences feel tacked-on, as if an afterthought. So does a midpoint revelation that Jennifer’s not alone: There’s a cute boy (Daniel Gillies) trapped in the adjoining room! This is convenient, because not only can they maybe help each other out, but also, sex can be had.
Although The Gumball Rally lacks the star power of Needham’s films, its lack of recognizable celebrities is mitigated by the fact that its cast actually made the effort to inhabit likable characters, rather than just mug shamelessly until the director announced it was time to get back to the hotel and par-tay.
And how I wish I could go back in time to save myself two hours and four bucks. This is not a story — it’s an endlessly cycling collection of footage of knights falling down, students climbing out of houses, swords clanging, and our heroes checking their “countdown markers” to see how much time they have left to make their rescue. In the spirit of things, I kept checking the readout on my DVD player to see how much more crap was left to unload before the closing credits.
Plot? We’ve pretty much already said it. Like