The Good Neighbor Review – Gripping, A Psychological Game of Manipulation

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Category: Indies, Docs, Foreign Film

Published on Tuesday, 21 June 2022 08:00

Written by Janet Walker

The Good Neighbor, from Screen Media, presents an intense psychological thriller that begins after an American in Latvia flees the scene of an accident that leaves a woman dead, and the police meticulously piece together the crime.

The film begins as David, played by Luke Kleintank, an American journalist arrives in Latvia, to begin working with an international news agency. The publisher, Grant, played by Bruce Davison, arranges for David to stay in his apartment outside the city, until he gets settled.

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A couple of days pass and his neighbor, Robert, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, introduces himself, a good neighbor would. As David is itching to see a little of the nightlife, he asks Robert about the local club scene. Soon the pair are driving Grant’s car, which had been parked in the apartment’s garage, and heading to a nightclub.

At the club, David immediately meets a stunning blonde, Janine, played by Ieva Florence, he is smitten. Between the drinks and the dancing, she writes her number on his arm, and he immediately calls. During this time, we see Robert watching them with an underlying anger, as he is now the outcast, ditched for the girl, in what began as a boy’s night out.

After Janine leaves, David explains he has an early morning so they should leave also. As David is driving, he takes his eyes off the road to fix the radio, and out of nowhere he runs into a woman who is biking, without lights, on a darkened country road.

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Robert who is a nurse, immediately begins to check her vitals and pronounces her dead. David recognizes it is Janine from the club. The two men, in an irrational split second, decide to flee the scene and leave her on the road.

This sets up act two where the nightmare begins to fill every waking minute. David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt. His first thought is to immediately return to the U.S. and leave this horror in the rear view. As he is working at a news agency, his first assignment is to cover the hit and run accident.

Robert, on the other hand, shows no remorse. He is clear and decisive, methodical, and immediately begins to destroy the evidence. He ditches the car in a local lake, he visits a patient, a elderly homebound, woman, who explains she couldn’t sleep and heard the accident and even saw what looked like two men.

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For the police who are investigating, each step in the investigation is reported to the media and as David is the media, he relays the information to Robert, who now feels bound to David by the accident and becomes overbearing and possessive.

When David meets Vanessa, played by Eloise Smyth, Janine’s sister, he becomes involved with her, in some misplaced sense of escape before he realizes Robert will do anything to protect their secret.

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The Good Neighbor, a gripping race against time thriller, builds with slow intensity, as the alibi the pair designed to cover their trip home from the club, unravels. The net around them is slowly pulled, until the pair are cornered.

A riveting, psychological game of manipulation, The Good Neighbor in is in select theaters and on streaming platforms. See it.

Country: Latvia

Language: English, Latvian.

Runtime: 97minutes.

Director: Stephan Rick. 

Writer: Stephan Rick. 

Based on the Original Screenplay by: Stephan Rick and Silja Clemens. 

Co-writer: Ross Partridge.

Cast: Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Luke Kleintank, Eloise Smyth, Bruce Davison, Ieva Florence, Regina Razuma.