You could argue that all Neil LaBute movies are horror movies.
Whether it's "In the Company of Men," "Nurse Betty" or "The Shape of Things," someone always ends up being tormented and terrorized in some way. And in true horror-flick fashion, the victim is usually a woman.
But in "Lakeview Terrace," the director takes his first real stab at the genre, if you will ("The Wicker Man" doesn't count because it was a remake, and because it was just so awful). And with this story of a psycho-cop who tries to run off his new next-door neighbours, you wish he'd have just given into the B-movie instincts of the material and not tried to make "Lakeview Terrace" about Something Important.
As an overzealous Los Angeles police officer, Samuel L. Jackson certainly seems ready to head down such a cliched, schlocky road. He is, after all, the one who triumphed over all those (expletive) snakes on that (expletive) plane. But LaBute, working from a script by David Loughery and Howard Korder, is trying to probe the dangers that lurk within a supposedly safe suburbia with making a statement about race relations. It's "Unlawful Entry" meets "Crash" -- you can almost hear the pitch meeting going on in your head.
Jackson's Abel Turner is a strict, single father of two who patrols his hillside cul de sac as thoroughly as he works his beat. When racially mixed newlyweds move in next door -- Chris (Patrick Wilson), who is white, and Lisa (Kerry Washington), who is black -- he turns even more prickly.
Some of the initial tension is intriguing: the subtext that exists within Abel and Chris' awkward neighbourly small talk, the vaguely threatening tone in Abel's voice that grows less veiled in time. Abel catches Chris sneaking cigarettes and tossing out the butts. And, understandably, he's a little perturbed when Chris and Lisa christen their swimming pool with some late-night skinny dipping in full view of his young son and teenage daughter.
Then there are the freaky break-ins and acts of vandalism that no one can explain. The blinding security lights Abel shines into the couple's bedroom at night and refuses to shut off, even after repeated complaints. And Abel's incessant remarks about their interracial marriage.
"You can listen to that noise all night long," Abel says to Chris as he blares rap from his car stereo, "but when you wake up in the morning, you'll still be white."
Wilson, who also played the seemingly good guy in "Little Children," effectively keeps things low-key even as Jackson's eyes bulge and he busts out that maniacal laugh. But any early good will gets obliterated by the over-the-top ending. When Abel says to Chris during his nightly patrols, "Not everybody up here is somebody you'd want to live next door to," it's just one of many occasions to beat us over the head with the obvious. And that comes long before a single gunshot.
Abel's justification for his increasingly violent actions, by the way, is totally oversimplified; making him simply evil or crazy would have been preferable. Even more clunky is the fact that a wildfire, fanned by Southern California's notorious Santa Ana winds, is growing and spreading toward Lakeview Terrace throughout the film. By the end, smoke chokes the hills and the sky surrounds the generic tract houses in a ball of orangey-red.
Is this hell? Or a war zone? Maybe it's both, man. That's deep.
One and a half stars out of four.
