The Boy Next Door Review

Grade: B-
One-Liner: I love your mother's cookies!

I tend to rate thrillers on the scale of 1 to Jennifer Lopez's Enough. So when The Boy Next Door — a drama about a teacher who has sex with one of her students and then has to defend herself against his psychotic lust — started airing previews, I was more than a little excited. In a season typically dedicated to serious dramas and stars' crazy on-screen weight fluctuations, it was great to see some good, ole-fashioned beat downs coupled with weak backstories and J. Lo's signature booty.

Let's be real, everyone who was in the theater with me came to see the last 20 minutes (and it certainly didn't disappoint), but it did seem pretty pathetic that director Rob Cohen couldn't even throw some plausible storylines in to help us buy into things before Lopez ripped them apart (with her bare hands).

For example, we're supposed to believe that Claire (Lopez) is struggling in her marriage to Garrett (a graying and hefty John Corbett). He cheated on her. Yes, you read that right, a doughy Aiden from Sex and the City cheated on Jenny From the Block. (Perhaps he's still not over Carrie.) As the emotional high school teacher is trying to sort things out, a hunky, tank top-wearing stud moves in next door to help his ailing uncle.

Noah (Ryan Guzman) is 19 — taking care of those pesky pedophilia accusations — but never finished high school after his parents died in a fatal accident. He befriends Claire through her son and they realize they have mutual interests...like reading...Shakespeare...and stuff. Catching her in a moment of weakness, they do the deed. But uh, oh, turns out Noah is a crazy.

From then on it's nothing but creepy, popcorn-throwing, fun, in which Noah does a complete 180, gets extremely violent, and puts his mechanic's skills to good use. Claire handles it way better than Olivia Pope ever could, proving she is still the master. While it was just what I wanted to see, the order of recent popcorn thrillers remains Enough, Obsessed, Red Eye, and now The Boy Next Door.