Lisa [Kerry Washington] and Chris Mattson [Patrick Wilson] are newly weds who move into their first home in Lakeview Terrace. Their new next door neighbour, Abel Turner [Samuel L. Jackson], has decided to make the couple’s experience in their new home a living hell.

This film takes on the point of interracial couples and how they are treated by people in the worst way possible. They decide that instead of taking the route that most gay rights or black slavery type films would do it, by showing how the entire world hates you, they decide to embody a complete world of hatred into one man. That man is their next door neighbour Abel Turner, who happens to be a police officer.

Abel lost his wife a few years back in a car accident and he has been raising his two children on his own since then. You can tell alone how strict this man is from the first time you see him with his children at the breakfast table and he tells his son that he can’t wear a Kobe Bryant jersey because they won’t support him anymore in ‘my house’. I mean, I know that parenting can be strict and loose, and at the same time be right, but this is beyond ridiculous when you wont allow your son to support his own favourite players by wearing his jersey.

Abel introduces himself to the neighbours by pretend to rob Chris as he parks his car home from a long day at work. This is not exactly the ideal way to kick start a worthwhile relationship. After Chris dismisses the introduction as an ‘odd sense of humour’ they move along with life, until another problem occurs where Abel shines his highly intense security lights directly into Chris and Lisa’s bedroom window. Now we know a mini-war is on here. Except, that doesn’t really happen.

I, for the entire movie, was annoyed continuously by these attempts by Chris to act all-manly and confront Abel about his complaints and then he would be led around like a puppy because he doesn’t want to push the race card. He doesn’t want the conversation to end like ’cause I’m a black man’ from Abel. However, most of the conversations ended with an “or what!?” that annoyed me even more. At the beginning of the movie when Chris and Lisa decided to have sex out in their pool for the whole world to see, Abel had a pretty good argument to be an ass to them. But as time went on you realize that it was more of an excuse than honest retaliation.

If this movie has one thing going for it, it is the race thing. All of those moments where Sam Jackson is acting way too racist you can do nothing but sit in your seat and laugh ridiculously. And it bothered me how this ‘problem’ escalated this much throughout the space of what I think is a week. How can Sam Jackson’s character be this horrible an individual. The scene with his daughter dancing in her bikini over at Chris and Lisa’s house just got to me. It was the one scene which made me wonder what a real parent in the audience would’ve thought to that. It was the text book example of child abuse, and I hope I never have to see that for real right in front of me.

I think what really got to me was how much of a non-masculine character Chris is. Chris after every time he confronted Abel, and Abel told him ‘NO’ he would just be like ‘okay’ and walk off and pretend like it’s impossible to get what he wants done. He never at any point, until the exact end of the film of course, gets really angry and flies off the handle. He never aggressively confronts Abel, he just tries to be polite and hope that saying please will help. Now I’m not saying that one shouldn’t be polite if their in certain situations, but in a situation like this after the first and second encounter with this neighbour you have to end up angry and making your feelings crystal clear in order to get what you want.

Overall I can’t recommend this movie. I do think that at best you can watch it when it shows up on Showtime/HBO channels. Definitely not worth the ticket price. The only draw is laughing at how far they go with the racial stuff, and there are a good amount of scenes to keep you laughing in that regard.

IMDB says 6.4/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 43%

I say 4.0/10