the-neighbour-2016The Neighbour (2016)

Bringing back the star, Josh Stewart, with writer, producer and director, Marcus Dunstan, of The Collector (2009) and The Collection (2012) in another thriller where Josh Stewart plays a petty crook who ends up in a residence that has been converted to house, kill and torture strangers and must escape with those the owner has kidnapped.

This isn’t a third collector I swear. It just has a lot of similarities and besides the Collector series was a lot of fun to watch so why not more of the same.

So Josh plays John who is stuck in a town that seems to be a far more wretched hive of scum and villainy than Mos Eisley though we all know Jabba’s Palace was where the truly villainous and scummy liked to hang out.
Even the Sheriff is a perverted groper.

So Josh’s fellow criminal girlfriend Rosie spies her neighbour Troy killing a stranger but the neighbour notices her.
When josh returns he goes looking for her and stumbles across the modified basement and tries to take out Troy only for help to arrive exactly as he is about to make his move.

It’s so bloody unlucky you couldn’t write it.

Just like in the Collector series Josh plays a someone you know is a lowlife but will go out of his way to help those he doesn’t know. Maybe I’ve been jaded by decades of watching films where average people seem to only argue with strangers and then abandon them to their fate rather than help but I like how he seems to help for no reason than because it is the right thing to do.

Troy brings a suitable amount of tension and that creepy factor around him which adds to an already nicely intense film. A lot of the tension comes from the slow pace or more accurately how the film takes its time in scenes which need it but never seems laboured.
I cannot criticise the pacing nor the performances which make the best of some by-the-book standard characters but most are engaging with Josh is his usual understated self.

The film holds together for the most part but it does slip up at times especially near the end where several people escape independently at the same time in ways that aren’t believable to the realism the film has created for itself and it wouldn’t be a modern horror film if it didn’t have the final girl have a scene where she is more resilient than the T-100 but these are minor slip ups in a largely consistent production.

The music is fantastic. Very Americana and very fitting for the scenes.
All in all I really liked this one a lot. Probably not to everyone’s taste and very similar to the Collector with some of the elements plot-wise but if you liked that one then there is no reason you can’t like this one.