Two complaints: Neil Labute's excellent thriller has dark, nasty undertones, but in the end are they dark and nasty enough? Once you start down this complex road of inter-racial (and marital) tension, surely you need to go all the way?
And then there's Abel's kids, conveniently removed from Act 3 by his sister-in-law.
Still, it's well-written, well-paced and Jackson's performance is superb. Films like Next Door and Unlawful Entry may have had vaguely similar premises, but the oppositions here play out in a far more subtle and penetrating fashion and it struck me that we were also being invited to imagine that this embittered and racist cop might just be onto something about his new neighbours, something more elusive than the mere fact of their multiracial union.
I was to some extent reminded of a short story by Juan Goytisolo that I read recently (Los Hombres-Cigüeña), in which a Moroccan man is transformed into a stork and travels north to settle in the house where his wife has taken up with a French lover and proceeds to sow disorder in their relationship.
Grade: A-
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