It's rare to find a movie that achieves excellence in as many aspects as 'The Good Neighbor' manages to do. It works as a thriller, a low-level horror, a drama, a comedy and a mystery all at once and is equally brilliant in all of these regards. I was really quite blown away by it. The film begins with a thought-provoking voice-over (that will play into things later in the film obviously) and I thought to myself, if the writing is half as excellent as that voice-over alone, we could be in for something very special here. Sure enough, the thought process that has gone into the writing here is outstanding and makes for a very fine movie.
The less you know about the story going in (as I myself knew next to nothing) the more you will enjoy this. It catches you off guard time and again. The acting is brilliant too which really helps make the experience just that bit more enjoyable. James Caan in particular shows he still has it. The man is captivating to watch.
If you break almost any film down into three parts, the beginning, the middle and the end, it will fail in at least one of those areas. 'The Good Neighbor' however, doesn't. The beginning sets the film up perfectly, the middle is intense and intriguing and the ending is really quite a beautiful thing that most Oscar nominated films would be happy to put on the screen. This was the closest I've been to giving a film a '10' rating in a long time.
The less you know about the story going in (as I myself knew next to nothing) the more you will enjoy this. It catches you off guard time and again. The acting is brilliant too which really helps make the experience just that bit more enjoyable. James Caan in particular shows he still has it. The man is captivating to watch.
If you break almost any film down into three parts, the beginning, the middle and the end, it will fail in at least one of those areas. 'The Good Neighbor' however, doesn't. The beginning sets the film up perfectly, the middle is intense and intriguing and the ending is really quite a beautiful thing that most Oscar nominated films would be happy to put on the screen. This was the closest I've been to giving a film a '10' rating in a long time.