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Parents' Guide to

The Good Neighbor

By Jeffrey Anderson, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

Cookie-cutter "psychopath" thriller has violence, language.

Movie R 2022 105 minutes
The Good Neighbor Movie: Poster

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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What's the Story?

In THE GOOD NEIGHBOR, journalist David (Luke Kleintank) arrives in Riga, Latvia, following a bad breakup. He's taken a job working for an old colleague, Grant (Bruce Davison), and will even be staying in Grant's house. While trying to get Grant's car started, David meets his neighbor, nurse Robert (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), and they strike up a friendship. One night while out for drinks together, David hits it off with Janine (Ieva Florence) and gets her phone number. But, driving back home on a dark road (after having had too many), David hits Janine on her bicycle. At Robert's urging, they leave her for dead rather than risk arrest in a foreign country. As David's guilt creeps up on him -- and as he becomes unexpectedly involved with Janine's sister, Vanessa (Eloise Smyth) -- Robert becomes more and more obsessive and demanding toward David, to the point that it starts to feel dangerous.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

This cookie-cutter thriller takes the old "psycho neighbor" genre popular in the 1990s and, rather than riffing on it, slavishly copies it in a way that's devoid of suspense or energy. The Good Neighbor follows the lead of films like Fatal Attraction and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle -- two of the most successful movies in this thriller subgenre -- but with a male psychopath, rather than a female one. (Though Meyers is no match for Robert De Niro in Cape Fear.) The men's friendship is just the beginning of this movie's trouble. It doesn't flow, and it never feels organic. It feels like the two men are reading dialogue at each other. Plus David never seems to be working and somehow has plenty of time for drinks and fishing.

Robert's sudden switch from buddy to stalker also makes little emotional sense. It's too abrupt. The same goes for David's connection with Janine in the bar. Their supposedly flirty conversation ("I like your bracelet") is so dull that it's head-scratching how he manages to come away with her number. And so it goes with nearly every interaction in the movie. The main problem with The Good Neighbor is that the characters and their emotional interactions don't drive the plot. Rather, everything happens in service of the plot; the characters are enslaved by it. They can't move. Even the beautiful Latvian locations aren't used for much more than window dressing. In the end, there's little "good" about this one.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about The Good Neighbor's violence. How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

  • How is drinking depicted? Is it glamorized? Are there consequences for drinking?

  • How is sex depicted? What values are imparted?

  • Does David face the appropriate consequences for his actions? Why, or why not?

Movie Details

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