The Good Neighbor
James Caan plays an elderly gentleman that lives alone in the neighborhood and keeps to himself and doesn't like for visitors to come in his house.
He did have a wife, but the neighbors haven't seen her around in a long time.
Rumor was that she left him because he beat her.
Two teenage high school boys decide to do an experiment based on the premise that perception of the truth can alter your truth.
They decide to rig the old man's house to make him think it might be haunted, and see how he reacts.
Of course the boys know that it is not haunted because they will be the ones pulling the strings.
But will it make the old man change his mind about the house being haunted because of a false perception?
They hook up some devices that will control his thermostat, electrical pulses that make things go off and on in the house, and rig the back screen door to open and slam shut repeatedly.
And set up a couple of hidden cameras in the house to watch how he reacts.
But the old man does not respond to any of the stimuli as expected.
He doesn't call the police or anyone else for help when these spooky things happen to him.
He just takes it and keeps it to himself.
And why does he keep a padlock on only one door inside the house --- the basement door.
The basement where he spends hours at a time.
What/who does he have in the basement???
This movie is a psychological thriller that will have you questioning which perception is truth and which one isn't.
Luckily the ending of this movie does clear everything up and doesn't leave you hanging.
It will leave you with an emotional downer as to the torment both the old man and the boys go through with this experiment.
The movie has flashbacks.
It has a trial going on (something bad happened in the old man's house).
You see flickers of the trial going on while you are watching the story unfold as it happened.
You also see some flashbacks of the old man with his wife.
I thought it was a good movie that kept you guessing as to what was really going on.
