'The Boy Next Door'
D
If I pay for the U-Haul, will “The Boy Next Door” please move away?
Jennifer Lopez dips back into the acting pool as Claire Peterson, a high school English teacher going through a divorce. She and her son are trying to learn to get by without her husband when Noah Sandborn appears.
Noah, played by Ryan Guzman, is moving in next door to take care of his uncle, but his interest quickly shifts as he and Claire share common interests and prolonged eye contact.
The attraction keeps rising until the point of no return: Claire and Noah have sex.
Claire is a nervous wreck after she wakes up from her night with Noah and explains what happened wasn’t his fault, taking the blame upon herself for giving in.
But Noah refuses to accept what happened as a mistake. He’s convinced the two are in love and attempts to force himself further into Claire’s life, enrolling himself into her class and getting close to her son.
The more Claire pulls away, the harder Noah pushes. He tries to break her family apart, pitting her own son against her, and threatens her job. And when that’s not enough, lives become part of the game.
“The Boy Next Door” is about obsession and how dangerous it can be. However, there is a subjective storyline about Claire that is not handled nor addressed properly.
When Noah comes onto Claire, she says no. In fact, she says it several times. She says that it’s wrong and tries to leave, but Noah restrains her and continues his advances.
Though Claire eventually stops saying no, she never gives clear, verbal consent.
This is known as dubious consent. Dubcon applies to situations in which sex is not exactly nonconsensual nor consensual.
Basically, it could be interpreted that Claire was raped. And when you take into consideration that Claire was also seen drinking before her encounter with Noah, the subject becomes even murkier.
“The Boy Next Door” never addresses this issue. The writers slide around it by having Claire take the blame for everything that happened and glamorizing it with well-defined abs and bulging biceps.
And while we’re on the subject of abs and biceps, let’s talk about just how unrealistic Noah Sandborn is. Not only is he ridiculously good-looking, he’s apparently some kind of martial arts master, a great mechanic, a clever computer hacker, a lover of classic literature, a skilled gunman and a sex god.
He’s also 19 years old.
I’m not a teenage boy, nor do I claim to be an expert on them, but I just have this feeling, a tiny suspicion, that those are not typical hobbies or characteristics of most teenage boys.
Let’s also talk about how the guilt and awkwardness weighing on Claire is with the fact she slept with a teenager who, though of legal age, is enrolling in her school.
He’s a high school student. Yet it’s hard to feel Claire’s awkwardness and guilt when Noah looks too old to even be an intern at Google.
The actor, Ryan Guzman, is 27 years old. And he looks 27 years old. The man couldn’t pass for a teenager if you put him in a Hollister T-shirt and a DC snapback.
Guzman’s presence just proves this movie was about sex. It wasn’t a lesson to not sleep with your students because they might decide you’re in love and try to murder your family and run off into the sunset with you, which is a lesson you really shouldn’t need anyway.
There was no lesson, no moral, no point to this movie.
It was just a 91-minute platform for Guzman to flex his muscles and J-Lo to show off her heavenly blessed hair.
I am now accepting donations for that U-Haul.
