X
- 1985
- R
- New World Pictures
- 1 h 31 m
- 1985
- R
- New World Pictures
- 1 h 31 m
Summary Roy and Bo leave their small town the weekend after graduation for a short road trip to LA. Soon, they find themselves lashing out and leaving a trail of bodies behind them. The violence escalates throughout.
Directed By: Penelope Spheeris
Written By: Glen Morgan, James Wong
- 1985
- R
- New World Pictures
- 1 h 31 m
- 1985
- R
- New World Pictures
- 1 h 31 m
The Boys Next Door
66
User Score
Available after 4 ratings
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Where to Watch
Summary Roy and Bo leave their small town the weekend after graduation for a short road trip to LA. Soon, they find themselves lashing out and leaving a trail of bodies behind them. The violence escalates throughout.
Directed By: Penelope Spheeris
Written By: Glen Morgan, James Wong
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 6 Critic Reviews
66
67% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
17% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
17% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 6 Critic Reviews
66
67% Positive
4 Reviews
4 Reviews
17% Mixed
1 Review
1 Review
17% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
A very well made, disorienting movie about inarticulated despair and utter hopelessness. It reminds me a lot of ''Over the Edge,'' Jonathan Kaplan's bleak, bitter picture of teen-age life in an architecturally perfect, California housing development. Unlike ''Over the Edge,'' however, The Boys Next Door is less interested in causes than in effects, which Penelope Spheeris, the director, turns into the photographic record of a grim, vivid, joyless ride to hell.
The Boys Next Door is a dark, forbidding vision--perhaps too harsh for audiences accustomed to more frivolous pictures of teen high jinks. But its lack of sentimentality gives it a rugged moral force--it doesn’t soften the twisted fury that sends these kids careening into a crazed death trip.
Whereas Spheeris' The Wild Side was weakened by sentimentalising its disaffected punk heroes, her second feature presents a tougher and more balanced view of teen violence; while we're allowed a glimmer of understanding into the murderers' feelings, we never indulge them with misplaced sympathies: these boys are monsters.
This compelling and horrifying study of random violence seldom lives up to its promise, but it still packs a powerful wallop.
Unfortunately the film itself doesn’t live up to the expectations. Even if intentions are worthy, it emerges glib and uninvolvingly.
The Boys Next Door is just another exploitation movie about murderous nuts -- exactly what you wouldn't expect from Penelope Spheeris, the director of "Suburbia." [12 Nov 1985, p.B11]
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