It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This thriller is very watchable due to the high caliber acting of three of the main characters. A J Cook (Jennifer Jareau on TV's Criminal Minds) and Matthew Harrison play Lori and Tom Peterson who have been married for two years and decide to leave the big city of Chicago and move to a smaller community in the countryside, where they believe their lives will be safer and more like the lives of the people on that old television series The Andy Griffith Show which took place in the quaint little town of Mayberry. Little do they know that they have moved next door to a very militant neighbor who associates with a group of degenerates that like to party at his house. James Russo is the neighbor from hell named Carl Schmidt. Carl is married to Theresa Russel's character Helen Schmidt who is a stay at home mom with two young children. Helen appears to be abused both verbally and physically by her ex military husband Carl. Two other characters that come in to play are Lori Peterson's hip girlfriend Monica played by Sean Young who comes to town to visit her good old friend Lori, and the not so nice, and corruptible skirt chaser Sheriff Vernon Crank played by Frederic Forrest.Yes, the script is very predictable, but the musical score suits the scenes as they play out, and A J Cook, Theresa Russell and James Russo are all good actors who hold the movie up quite well to the bitter climax. Even the director Joey Travolta (yes he is John Travolta's brother) does an admirable job pulling off a pretty good thriller. One could do a lot worse than watching this 95 minute thriller, so sit back with your popcorn and leave at least one light on for this two and half star thriller.

This could have been turned into a better than average garden variety thriller with a different ending. In fact, I suspect the original script may have been written that way. Certainly the opening scene which found the new bride hovering between dream and reality -- and perhaps a bid daft -- was an excellent set-up for an ending in which after the terrified woman calls the cops, having made one of the more macabre discoveries of terror spoofs, the knock on the door reveals the police officer, suspensefully followed by the unbloodied "victims" who stagger over from the party next door to console the poor woman, victim of an over-stressed imagination or really off her rocker. Too bad about the ex-marine who only wanted to do what randy marines like to do to available women, but the life of a fighting man is fraught with hazard.I thought the shovel banging on a wooden box was a real blunder. Whether dead dog or murder victim, no killer would put the body in a box to bury it.

This is slightly less suspensefull then having somebody tell you the plot of "Rear Window". All scenes are done by the book, with no big mistakes, but with no imagination or heart either. The actors save the movie from being downright rotten.

I had the opportunity of being invited to the Vancouver screening of `The House Next Door'. The movie was very well done; it kept everyone in the audience on the edge of their seats wondering... why doesn't she leave? Vancouver composer John Sereda did an outstanding job on the films soundtrack. It was "Dramatic, Dynamic, Suspenseful, and it Rocked you"... It is definitely a movie worth seeing... and a soundtrack worth hearing.