Sunday, October 18, 2009

Neighborhood Watch [2005]

Neighborhood Watch is a (dangerously) spiked cocktail - part sweet, part sour, and part poison...most definitely in that order, with only the dosage mismeasured.

Bob and Wendi Patterson are two 20-somethings who moved cross country to a strange little town, it's blood pumped and kept alive only by the large chemical company that Bob arrived to work for.  If his new co-0workers weren't weird enough, his neighbors surely are.  An elderly couple too strange to be believed and an all too forward oddball - Adrian Trumbell - to name the important.

After a bouquet of poison oak and chocolates laced with horse laxative, Bob & Wendi finally wise up to Adrian's "welcome to the neighborhood" gifts, and present #3 is politely yet assuredly declined - Adrian takes offense and is determined to make them regret it.

A worthwhile effort from the writer of Dr. Giggles - Graeme Whifler - is effective, but more so just plain sick and frightfully twisted, as long as you can withstand the tedium of the first 45mins.  The front half is overfilled with unnecessary and terrible dark comedy, accompanied by momentum killer character development with no destination.  At times, it's painful to watch and outright embarrassing.   Only Nick Searcy (Adrian) is able to push this tale along with any sort of reward in sight.

In around the 47min mark, Searcy takes over the film, delivering one of the most fucked up,  craziest and ultra-psychotic characters of recent memory.  From then on, the realm only worsens- where disturbing is an understatement, creepy's a belittlement and sadistic is over-friendly - culminating into a definitive all out grotesque-fest finale.

Dribs and drabs...there's scab eating, trouser shit skids, the quaintly gorgeous Pell James, strangely erotic house cat sex, and if that doesn't do it for ya, see it for the most fucked up masturbation scene ever!

7/10

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