Nerds That Geek Movie Review: ‘The Good Neighbor’

Written by Scott Edwards

There is something to be said about social experiments that are meant to change your way of thinking; they are not good. With so many people loving to explore other people’s psyche, they should really look in the mirror and see their own. With all of the fun that people can have in making you feel like you are losing your mind, if it is not something that you want to follow through with, you will destroy more than one person’s life, you will also lose yourself. I do applaud anyone that attempts to do work with people’s minds, but I will never be one of them, since I have more going on up there that I know people will never want to know.

Ethan has been able to convince his good friend Sean to help him on his senior project for their psych class. Wanting to conduct a social experiment on his hermit neighbor, Ethan has a plan to make the old man believe that his house is haunted. With help from the smarter and wealthier Sean, the two set up a computer hub that can handle all of the video and audio feeds that they are going to set up in the old man’s house. Knowing that Harold Grainey is a man of repetition, they find the perfect time to make their way into his house and give him the ride of his life.

While setting up their surveillance equipment, Sean also sets up some tech gadgets that will help to reinforce the feeling that the house is actually haunted. With the doors of the house being left open when he is not there, the boys see that there is a lock on the basement door but cannot figure out why. Needing to make their way out of the house before Harold sees them, they are all set and ready to start the experiment of a lifetime and hopefully make their neighbor believe that there is a haunting in his house and drive him mad in the process.

Monitoring the first couple of nights with Harold, Ethan and Sean find the perfect time to start messing with him. Shutting off the power in the house, they see that Harold knows his way around, but does not seem to be afraid of what is happening around him. Needing to ramp up the scares a notch, the two activate the back door to open and close on demand. Now getting the reaction that they expected, Ethan and Sean also see that there is some crazy in Harold’s eyes. Getting an axe from the garage and chopping the door to shreds, the boys are now a little concerned with what the old man is capable of.  With a few more gags to pull, Ethan and Sean are becoming obsessed with what the old man is keeping in the basement since he has started to disappear down there for hours at a time. With their curiosity driving them, the two are able to formulate a plan on how to get someone to check it out, but when nothing is found, they come up with a new method of breaking and entering to find out once and for all what Harold has been hiding from the world.

I don’t know what I was expecting when turning this movie on, it seemed like a different premise than I am used to and it did manage to entertain for the most part. I was hoping for a little more haunting types of gags to be going on, but the ones that they pulled off were pretty cool and would have freaked out a normal person. I am not sure I liked how the story was told in three different timelines as I think even the director got a little confused since one line ruined the outcome of the movie for me. Overall however, you get pulled into the life of Harold and you get to see what he has been dealing with while not wanting to be bothered by the outside world. I do hope that if anyone is suffering from that much pain that they would try to seek and accept help from others, it not only keeps you out in the world, but you appear to be a regular person as well.

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