The Wrong Boy Next Door

The Wrong Boy Next Door

So John (Travis Burns) is the Wrong Boy Next Door, and also the Wrong Boy to try to get to wear a shirt, but his aversion to shirts is neither here nor there, at least as far as the narrative of this movie goes, but it is clearly everything as far as the heart as the movie goes.  But is John really the Wrong Boy Next Door?  What we propose here is that Katie (Calli Taylor) is actually the Wrong Girl Next Door to be living next to John, who is more or less the somewhat unstable boy next door who is getting a bad rap.

Our film starts out with a young man in an empty house arguing with another man named Franklyn, played by Wrong stalwart Jason-Shane Scott, about how 'He's Out!', he says he can't do it anymore.  I'm not completely sure what this is all about or what he can't do anymore, but I know that Franklyn and this kid buys houses and flips them.  But I guess they do it illegally or something?  I'm unsure.  I do know that Franklyn is walking around this house with a hammer in his hand, but it doesn't look like anything in this house needs repair, and if I was that young man I would've been keenly observant of this.  He was not.  It seems the only way out of the house flipping game is in a body bag.  Who knew?

He said drop and give me twenty, but he has yet to master the push up.

Now it's time to meet Katie.  Katie is a high school senior and a very bad girl.  

Kenny G was hoping the tie-dyed shirt would help him blend in.

This scene was actually in slow motion so we could completely absorb the sexuality that this girl exudes, in this fairly horny movie about high school kids, albeit ones being played by grown ass men and women.  The other high school kids in this picture seem to be dressed normal, and have things like book bags and stuff.  Not my girl Katie, unless she's keeping her books in her belly button.  While Katie slow mo's into school without pens or paper, John is liking what he sees.

Should John be hanging outside high school fences leering at high school chicks?  Probably not, but he is the Wrong Boy Next Door.  Dressing inappropriately is only the beginning of our introduction to Katie and her behavioral issues.  

This is Katie vaping, which is against school rules, which Katie does not care about, which gets her suspended for the day.

Considering we are at home, we could use glasses like normal people.

Having been kicked out of school, Katie heads home with her bestie Sam (Alexandra Scott) and engages in some underage drinking. 

By this time Katie has also noticed the shirtless young man next door and decides she needs to get a closer look at some of that.

If I had wings I would fly, let me contemplate...

That's Katie in the corner there playing peeping tom, which I believe is also against the law.  Meanwhile we get to learn a little bit about John, who it turns out is the new kid Franklyn has hired for his illegal house flipping gig, which I still haven't quite figured out how it works or why it's illegal.   Franklyn just needs John to focus and get the house ready to show.  John is focused all right, just not on getting the house ready as he sneaks in the house, while Katie and her mom are away, placing hidden cameras so he can spy on his girl.

I say 'hidden' but a camera that large at the top of the stairs should probably be easily seen by anybody.  It won't be.  While John is wiring her house, Katie is back at school after her suspension doing Katie stuff.

I got nothing, other than the fact this was one of the 
funniest things I've ever seen.  Well done Tracy Nelson.

Katie's teacher had the nerve to ask Katie put her phone away during class, and then had the double nerve to ask for the phone.  Katie gave her the phone, Sandy Koufax style, bopping her dead square in the forehead and knocking her out cold.  Now we get to add assault to Katie's list of transgressions.  This gets Katie kicked out of school for a month, slapped with a tether and house arrest, along with a stern visit from Police Office and school security liaison Detective Watkins (Vivica A. Fox).  Katie's mom, Lori (Meredith Thomas) is concerned that Det. Watkins thinks she's a bad mom.  Det. Watkins assures her she thinks no such thing because she did way worse at Katie's age.  Like what Detective Watkins?  What, pray tell, did you do that was worse than assaulting one of your teachers with a blunt force object that sent said teacher to the hospital with a third grade concussion?  Are you talking about that time you and three of your homegirls started robbing banks to make ends meet and three of them ended up dead?   If we're not talking the plot of Set it Off, then I need to know what you did Det. Watkins that still allowed you to join the police force and carry and obscenely large gun.

Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy...
Nope, that's definitely a gun.

Now Katie has to remote school for month, and keep her grades up or it's off to jail for her.  Fortunately she will have some company.

The fridge door might be closed, but the six pack was still on display.

John knocks on the door, sans shirt, and asks if he can come in.  The answer to that question is obviously 'no', but Katie let's him on in.  She asks him if she could get him something to cool him off.  John replies that he's actually looking for something to warm him up.  Jesus.  John lets Katie know that he's fixing up his dead grandma's house next door with a contractor friend.  Katie didn't know the lady next door had kids much less grandkids.  She also didn't know she was dead so there that also.   They make out a little bit and now John has got it in his mind that the girl that was peeping at him through his window, let him in her house with him half naked, her answering the door half naked, and just made out with him, that they might be an item.  Why would he jump to that crazy conclusion I wonder?  

Just in case we forgot John is unstable, we get to see him threaten a neighbor, who I guess is the HOA president, who was chastising John over putting garbage in front of the house.  

There is an HOA shirt ordinance sir!  And that Hammer you're 
threatening to kill me with is 6mm over regulation.  Expect a citation.

Then he threatens to slice Katie's bestie's boyfriend for, I don't know, something. 

No man, I'm not in the market for a slightly used retractable blade!

That's bad and all, and of course, Samantha tells Katie that her new boyfriend threatened to cut her boyfriends throat, but Katie is sure it was a misunderstanding.

NOW you want to wear shirt.  Really?

But after this little make out session, John done messed up.  While he was off in the bathroom or somewhere, his phone rang.  Katie picked it up and answered it.  John totally lost his shit.  As he should have.  Now Katie doesn't want to see him anymore despite John's passionate apologies.  NOW Katie feels she needs to find out who this guy is but considering she's on a tether and can't leave the house, she dispatches her best friend, who is the best, best-friend ever, to get the 411 on the boy next door.

Samantha puts on her best Katie Tramp Gear for some reason, I guess to blend in at John's old high school, and starts asking questions.  What Sam learns is that Katie is the spitting image of John's previous girlfriend who he stalked into a restraining order.  I guess she's still alive.  Now Katie knows she can have nothing more to do with him, but John wants to prove his love.  First he handles Katie's shrew of a tutor who's been giving Katie a hard time for her lack of understanding of the quadratic equation.

John's neck seatbelt accessory still needs some work.

Then his boss comes over to the house and is mighty upset that John hasn't finished the repairs yet and gets all up in his grill.

Do you think razor stubble this nice grows by itself!

John tries to explain to him the she doesn't love him anymore, and he doesn't know what to do, but Franklyn doesn't care.  He just yells at John which hurts his feelings.  That hammer we saw earlier?  It's going to get another work out, only on this guy this time.  

Katie knows something is going on next door, but again, she can't leave the house so she has Samantha risk her life to break into the house when John leaves.  Samantha seriously needs a better best friend.  Samantha looks around and doesn't find much, other than a dead body.

He looks so peaceful when he's dead.

Well, now Katie knows she was making out with the wrong guy and calls Detective Watkins to let her know that there's a dead body in John's house.  

Are your hands hiding a gun?  Damn... actually just excited to see me.

But alas, she does not find the dead body and everybody goes off on Katie for not learning any lessons and for being absolutely terrible.  I dig not believing Katie, because Katie is the actual worst, but not believing Samantha?  Samantha is straight up righteous!  John is genuinely hurt that Katie would betray him like this, and when one is hurt what does one do?  Kidnap the mom of the one who hurt you of course!

Certs... with Retsyn sir.  Please.  Try one.

John tells Katie to meet him at the school and she better NOT call the cops.  John knows as well as anybody she's wearing a tether, but whatever.  John just wants to tell Katie how much she loves him and how they should be together, and runs down the list of terrible things that Katie has done up to that point to prove his point.    His points are valid and they do seem perfect for each other, if one was to ask me, but Katie has changed!  I guess.  Katie was just acting out because her dad died a year ago.  She tells John they will never be together.

And that's for not buying me a new phone 
after I broke mine on my teacher's forehead!

That slap stung like a thousand bees, and John was going to kill Katie and her mom, but then he heard the sirens bought on by the tether.  Actually, I think he had plenty of time to kill both of them and still get away, personally, but he just ran and swore he will return.

Wait for it... Wait for it.... He was the WRONG BOY NEXT DOOR!

And we end with Detective Watkins, Mom, Katie and Samantha, who is also at the scene for reasons I don't understand, with Det. Watkins uttering the film's title, and letting them know that they are safe now and he will not be bothering them anymore.  I have no idea what facts she is basing this statement on.  They haven't caught him, he knows where they live, work, and go to school, and he has their house wired for video.  A Black person in a horror movie is safer than they are.  The credits rolled anyway.

The Wrong Boy Next Door was a little light on the Wrong, to be honest.  We had some of our regular Wrong stuff such as some kind of indecipherable illegal plan, large hidden cameras in plain sight, a well formed grown ass woman dressed wildly inappropriately as a teenage girl, an amazing preponderance of shirtless dude, to the point I wanted to lend him one of mine, and a comfortable cast of Wrong regulars.   But what truly makes a Wrong is The Crazy, and I'm not so sure about The Crazy in this one.  John wasn't so much crazy as he was just love sick and just needed a better way to deal with his emotions is all.  Katie is actually worse than John in most ways.  Sure, John threatened a few people, but he was provoked.  They totally started it.  Yes, he murdered the tutor, and murder is bad, but would he have killed this tutor had he not met Katie?  I'm not saying it's Katie's fault this lady is dead, but she did inspire this lady's murder.  The other guy John killed, that dude was already a murderer so John was just taking out the garbage.  True, he didn't know, per se, that this dude was a murderer, but that's just semantics now isn't it.  All I'm saying is if John didn't get involved with the peeping, drinking, vaping, cell phone throwing Katie, he would've been okay, the house would be finished and sold and the economy would be doing better because of it.  Katie is bad for the economy.  You just can't argue with these simple facts people.  

Two Wrongs!