♡First movie review+rundown!!(The Good Neighbor)♡

I have to redo this ENTIRE review and movie rundown as my dumbass accidentally deleted everything while I was at the very end aaaaaaahhh I wanna cryyyy BUT I can't give up!! So this is, to the best of my ability, a recreation of everything I just deleted :(
**I want to preface that my blogs are just for fun. I don't have a letterboxd but I'm heavily considering making one and doing full length reviews here on Spacehey. I've watched tonsssssss of movies over the years and should really catalog them ^_^'

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HEAVILY SPOILERS FOR THE GOOD NEIGHBOR (2016) I basically explain the whole movie

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The Good Neighbor (2016) is about two teen boys named Ethan and Sean who sneak into Ethan's neighbor's house, placing cameras and setting up elaborate pranks around the home. The boys state what they are doing is harmless, bouncing between it being an experiment and a prank but Ethan is quick to defend their actions by stating his neighbor, Mr. Grainey, deserves it. Mr. Grainey is a grumpy old man who lives alone and is rather antisocial, usually having a sour attitude towards the people he interacts with.(but he has a cute cat he is very kind to :3)

The scenes with the boys are mostly shot through their handheld camera's perspective, but the entire film is not shot this way as we bounce between different points in time in the story completely. These four stories are: The boys(which is filmed first-person with their own cameras), Mr. Grainey, Mr. Grainey's flashbacks(which at first can be a bit hard to follow as they happen without warning), and flash-forward courtroom trial of the aftermath where neither Ethan nor Mr. Grainey are present for a majority of.

It's a personal petpeeve of mine in found-footage/first-person films where, the film will just stop being found footage and just shot in third-person with higher production. It makes me lose immersion but I suppose the changes in perspective do work in this film for the trial parts as the footage is shown in the courtroom.

Now, the pranks the boys pull on Mr. Grainey are cruel and unknowingly align with memories Mr. Grainey has of his late wife. ie. slamming doors, music playing at night. At some point the boys even lower the home's temperate to freezing cold and break the window above Mr. Grainey's bed in the middle of the night, leaving the old man freezing. I should state, Ethan is the one who is eager to torment the old man, having a personal resentment towards him. Sean thinks the pranks become unnecessarily cruel but doesn't actually interfere, usually being talked out of it by Ethan. The film is categorized as a horror movie/found-footage thriller but it's honestly neither of those and moreso just two boys tormenting the fuck out of a sad old man.

Ethan and Sean benefit from each other's friendship. Sean has a wealthy family and is tech savvy, supplying Ethan with all the equipment necessary to conduct their "experiment." Ethan's mother also notes that Sean is a "good influence" on Ethan, stating that Ethan had made bad choices when his father left and meeting Sean bettered him. Sean benefits from Ethan and even Ethan's mother as being caring figures for him. His parents seem to be absent in his life and very strict, so Sean spends a majority of his time at Ethan's house and even found a sense of belonging at Ethan's parties. Unfortunately Sean's "good influence" isn't enough to deter Ethan's perverse and cruel torment of Mr. Grainey that begins to separate the two of them, making Ethan controlling towards Sean as well as the film goes on. Bro had a camera installed in a spareroom to watch Sean like,,, what the hell...

Ethan's motivation is later revealed in the film when Sean is on the stand during the trial. When Ethan was 12(?) years old, his mother was being abused by his father and one night she ran to Mr. Grainey's home for help. Mr. Grainey supported Ethan's mother, convincing her to file for divorce and even having Ethan's dad jailed for his abuse, so Ethan believes Mr. Grainey is responsible for separating his parents. To be honest, I really didn't care for this at all and, I know Ethan is a teenage boy, he doesn't really understand what transpired and all but ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh my god I think it's stupid. I already felt iffy on Ethan's character but learning this made my eyes roll like,,, the old man didn't cause your parents to divorce, your dad beating your mom is what caused your parents to divorce.

I had mentioned before the pranks, posing as hauntings, that the boys pull on Mr. Grainey align with the man's memories of his late wife. These memories usually play out alongside the pranks and we see the sad story of an older couple, Mr. Grainey initially losing motivation to do things for himself and others, depressing himself and his wife but once she is diagnosed with cancer, he is more and more by her side and is shown to have loved and cared for her dearly even after she passed.

In Mr. Grainey's home, there is a basement the boy's weren't able to access when they were putting cameras around the house and Ethan becomes grossly obsessed with wanting to know what's inside, believing it might reveal a horrific scene to prove Mr. Grainey is a monster, even going so far as to call 911 and report they heard a woman screaming from his basement, but the police are unable to investigate what's inside and Ethan is left dissatisfied.(what is his fucking problem)

After Sean discovers Ethan had been watching in on a private interaction Sean had with a girl in Ethan's spare room, they boys get into an arguement and Sean returns the next day. Ethan is like, "sorry for what happened... anyway for the next prank this is what i was thinking" and then gets annoyed for Sean not accepting his apology?? he legit goes "I already said sorry what more do you want?" HELLO??? WHAT IS HIS ISSUE?? Sean wants all his equipment back and wants to end the "experiment" but, during their argument, Mr. Grainey's cat knocks over a camera inside the house. Mr. Grainey is asleep during this and Ethan is determined to sneak in and fix the camera so Mr. Grainey won't find it, going so far as to even steal his father's gun from his mom's closet. Once he fixes the camera, his trifling ass can't resist entering the basement. What is wrong with him ohhhhh my god.

He goes down there and finds a table with a bunch of different items on it covered by a sheet of fabric. Of these items, he picks up a bell and accidentally rings it, waking Mr. Grainey. Now, Mr. Grainey wakes up and gets his own gun. Ethan, being the petty child that he is, brings the bell with him as he runs out of the basement and places the bell on the table across from the basement door before hiding under a different, fabric covered, table in the living room. He does this as just another way to torment the old man and once Mr. Grainey sees the bell, he stares at it for a long while before taking his own life. Ethan is unaware that that is the bell Mr. Grainey's late wife used to call to him when she was immobile due to her cancer. He had gifted her that bell so he would be at her side whenever she needed him.

Sean rushes over and the two quickly try to gather all the cameras they planted in the house but the police quickly arrive and the boys are taken into custody. (During Sean running around the house to collect the cameras, Ethan starts trying to move the body and cleaning up the blood like,, are you stupid???) Sorry I really dislike Ethan's character.

The boy's torment of Mr. Grainey ends in a sentence of two years probation and five-hundred hours of community service as they're both underage and don't have previous criminal records, which leads to a massive upset. The film ends with the boys exiting the courthouse, surrounded by news camera crews and angry civilians.

There is one particular scene in the movie that kind of weirded me out. In one of the flashbacks Mr. Grainey has, he meets up with a younger woman in his house. They talk about how his wife won't be home in a while and that they still had time and the flashback ends as the woman takes her coat off. The way the scene is presented gives a weird implication that Mr. Grainey had an affair and it was so weird?? The woman is seen again in another flashback later on as Mrs. Grainey's nurse, same flashback where Mr. Grainey gifts her the bell. Idk maybe I'm reading too much into it but the way it was presented was so weird and didn't come up again so I think it was meant to be a fake-out or something.

Overall I thought it was a somewhat decent film. By the end I just felt sad for Mr. Grainey but nothing about the film really stuck with me after watching. I left out some smaller details of the film like some side characters. I'd say this movie is aaaa...... 3/5.

Pretty average film. Idk, I had a whole years long phase of watching disturbing films that negatively affected me so I'm really not into watching perverse torment/torture of innocent people anymoreeee,, Please don't let my review discourage you from watching it if you're still interested!! It's a solid watch, just not for me!♡