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The Good Neighbor
R0 - Australia - Umbrella Entertainment Review written by and copyright: James-Masaki Ryan (18th January 2017). |
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The Film
 “The Good Neighbor” (2016) Ethan (played by Logan Miller) and Sean (played by Kier Gilchrist) are high school students that have intricately planned out a social experiment / prank on an unsuspecting neighbor. Using surveillance equipment and remote triggers, the plan is to install the mechanisms within their neighbor’s house over a period of a few days to see if the neighbor would start believing in ghosts. Ethan has the set planned out while Sean is the technical ability. Their neighbor is Harold Grainey (played by James Caan) - a grumpy elderly neighbor across the street. He has frequently yelled at Ethan and other kids, poisoned a dog in the past for coming on to his yard, and as Ethan has said beat his wife and deserves to be pranked. Grainey has a daily regiment and the experiment is if any of his usual deeds would deviate from the norm with the pranks set up. They have installed mini motors to make his screen door slam without wind, make a window crack on cue, or have his electricity cut on and off remotely. While Ethan is adamant about sticking to the plan and seeing the effects on the old man, Sean starts to have some second thoughts on if they are taking things too far along the way. “The Good Neighbor” may fall into the category of the “found footage” genre as it shows the security cams, webcams, and documented footage by the characters, not all scenes are shot in the found footage hand held style. There are some scenes in traditional camera setups here and there and there which are differentiated with the cameras used and the aspect ratio change. The documentary footage is all in 1.78:1 while all the traditional non-documentary scenes are in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with a very different color tone. It is also set apart from other found footage films by incorporating flash-forwards within the structure - while the audience sees the story of Ethan and Sean watching Mr. Grainey and flowing in chronological order, there are cuts to a future courtroom scene in which they talk about the “tragedy” that unfolded inside Mr. Grainey’s home due to the actions of the boys. It does set up an interesting take on the story - as we see the lawyer (played by Tamlyn Tomita) question people, but the audience still must guess what the tragedy was and who was the ultimate victim (or victims). As intriguing as it sounds, there are some flaws with the film that ultimately weigh down the impact - and that includes the courtroom scenes. As the film sets up that there is something a little “off” about Mr. Grainey and the mystery of the locked basement, there is always tension within the story without having cutting back and forth to the courtroom. The audience is given the fact that there will be a “bloody body” very early on in the film so when the tragic event occurs, the shock is not as strong as it could have been. Not only with the flash forwards, but the flashbacks they also seemed a bit unnecessary. There are occasional flashbacks of the memories of Mr. Grainey - but they seem very out of place. With most of the story coming from the viewpoint of the kids and the images on the video cameras, when the audience is suddenly given glimpses of Mr. Grainey’s past in ambiguous flashback form, they are a view out of place. While his sometimes unusual actions were shown to be a little crazy throughout, inserting the vague past moments into the story did not diminish his weirdness or explain enough about it. The last 10 minutes explain everything there needs to be known about him and yes it does make sense. But editing wise, it seemed structurally unevenly done. James Caanis the biggest name in the independently produced film and while his performance was praised at festivals, he does not really get enough screentime or dialogue to make anything stand out entirely. It’s not a bad performance at all but considering his filmography this is a very minor work. Logan Miller and Kier Gilchrist get 90% of the scenes and dialogue in the film and it is their chemistry or anti-chemistry that carry the film along. They do have very different personalities with Ethan being the cool outgoing guy while Sean being the more introverted nerdy guy, and there is a plot reason why they hang out together, but neither actor truly shines as a standout in performance though the work gets done. “The Good Neighbor” was independently produced and was the debut feature film directed by Kasra Farahani, known more for art department work on various films such as ”Star Trek Into Darkness” and ”Alice in Wonderland”. The film proved to be vastly different in scale and style from other films he had worked on in the past, and while “The Good Neighbor” is not a great film, it does have some good ideas and it is watchable keeping you interested in the outcome - though it may not have the shocking horror angle that people might be expecting. The film debuted at South by Southwest in 2016 with the working title “The Waiting” which was sold to various markets and retitled as “The Good Neighbor”. The film played in limited theatrical screenings in the United States but was unfortunately dumped to direct-to-video for places such as Australia and Japan. Note this is a region ALL NTSC DVD which can be played back on any DVD and Blu-ray players worldwide
Video
Umbrella Entertainment presents the film in anamorphic widescreen in alternating 2.35:1 and 1.78:1 theatrical aspect ratios in the NTSC format. As stated the film has two different aspect ratios depending on the camera being a documentary footage shot - in 1.78:1 while the standard footage is in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. While the aspect ratio change makes sense and differentiates to the audience of what they are watching, theatrically it works fine - but on DVD it suffers. The 2.35:1 scenes have black bars on the top and bottom as they should on a widescreen TV. But the 1.78:1 scenes are windowboxed within the 2.35:1 frame - so there are black bars on the top and bottom and black bars on the left and right sides making the frame much smaller than usual. While theatrically it makes sense that the 2.35:1 scenes would be wider and bigger, people watching at home will be disappointed that 80% of the movie is framed within a black box. If they had the 1.78:1 scenes in standard full 1.78:1 without black bars, it may have worked better. The score is significantly lower than usual because of this choice of a mostly windowboxed transfer. As for the standard definition transfer, it looks fine for the most part - the surveillance footage with night vision footage or timecoded screens are faithfully kept while the other documentary footage with the video cameras look fine with no troubles of transfer errors or color bleeding. The 2.35:1 scenes have a bit more depth and better colors as they should. It’s not necessarily a visually enticing film, but the transfer gets across. The film’s runtime is 97:35.
Audio
English Dolby Digital 5.1 There is only one audio track and it is a full 5.1 track. Background music with ambient droning sounds for tension and songs make full use of the 5.1 channels. Dialogue is almost entirely in the center channel and there are no issues of audio dropouts or other problems. There are no subtitles offered on the disc.
Extras
There are no extras offered, not even a menu for the disc. Once the disc is played the film starts. Once the film ends, the disc stops. This is as barebones as it gets. There is currently a DVD from the US from Lionsgate which also has no extras, and a forthcoming DVD from Japan by Amazing DC which will only have the trailer as an extra. Umbrella Entertainment is only issuing the film on the DVD format only and it has yet to receive a Blu-ray release anywhere in the world.
Overall
“The Good Neighbor” is a bit of a disappointment. There are some good tense moments and the true reveal of the Mr. Grainey character is a good one, but it seemed too little too late. The Australian DVD is as barebones as it comes so a purchase is very difficult to recommend.
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