The Boy Next Door

Rated 1.0

A high-school teacher (Jennifer Lopez), estranged from her cheating husband (John Corbett), has a one-night stand with her hunk neighbor (Sacramento native Ryan Guzman), a new transfer student at the school where she works; serious stalking ensues. Written by the inexperienced Barbara Curry, this gender-switch on Fatal Attraction abandons logic early, lunging from borderline soft-core porn to flailing over-the-top melodrama and unintentional self-parody well before the halfway point in its modest 91-minute running time. Lopez, carefully photographed, looks as hot as ever, although she exercises her producer's prerogative by leaving the heavy lifting in the nudity department to the lesser-known Lexi Atkins as a local girl seduced by Guzman (who looks older than his character's 19 years). Rob Cohen directs without subtlety.