Is this the most sickeningly cruel and shocking film of the year…?

Maybe to some folks, but not to me. Rather, this is old school camp-oriented gore done just right.

I admit it: I didn’t know much about Neighbor before I popped it in my DVD player. I’d read the press release and was intrigued. The title alone seemed to promise something subversive, perhaps along the lines of the George Wendt/John Landis Masters of Horror episode “Family”—an edgy exposé of life in the suburbs, where no one really knows each other despite the sunshine-y façade that’s de rigueur. (Perhaps the fact that two of my neighbors, one of whom I would see every day, were recently returned to Russia for spying makes this theme resonate for me personally.)

I also perked up when noticing blurbs on the DVD box that referenced Hostel and Saw and how “brutal” the film was. I guess I was expecting a grueling, hard-to-watch, eyeball-searing exercise in explicit cruelty, especially as this was the “unrated, director’s cut” version of Neighbor (is there any other version in release?).

The bad news: if you’re expecting that incisive commentary on community… or that transgressive, I’ll-never-be-the-same-after-watching-this feeling… well, they’re both missing from Neighbor.

The good news:  rather than offering a lame attempt at these sorts of things, Neighbor represents an unpredictable, entertaining throwback to classic drive-in/grindhouse splatter flicks. In fact, think Herschell Gordon Lewis, and you won’t be far off. Writer/director Robert Angelo Masciantonio may not yet possess H.G.’s all-out showmanship (who does?), but one can easily see that he might be moving in that direction.

So, no, Neighbor does not feature a grim, realistic display of bloody torture—it’s a fun, dares-you-to-laugh showcase of endearing practical effects and blood-squirting gizmos. The overall effect is either camp or bordering-on-camp. And I guess I would have had a clue to this if I had first looked at the cast list, which includes Mink Stole in a small role.

The idea of having a “sexy” young woman be a (motiveless) torturer is half-camp already, but then America Olivo’s purring, eye-rolling, sardonic-to-the-hilt performance ensures it. Sure, in the isolated moments when she’s by herself and supposed to be acting, the efforts are not always that persuasive—to be clear, she’s never bad or boring, it’s just that it’s pretty obvious that she’s acting. But this isn’t the kind of movie where that matters. Olivo as “The Girl” is simply supposed to be attractive and charming (and homicidal) and for the most part she is; I say “for the most part” because there are a couple of close-ups where the lighting and angles are unflattering, but I’m figuring this was intentional from Masciantonio—as if to say, “This looks like pretty face… but what happens when we take a closer look?”

In place of social commentary, there’s every bit of random outrageousness that it seems the minimal plot can endure—there’s even genital mutilation, which I guess is why this DVD version is “unrated.” But absolutely none of it is convincing. In fact, with one or two rare exceptions, you don’t even see the face of the victim and the body part that’s being, um, distressed in the same shot. To be sure, Vincent Guastini’s gore effects are delivered with flamboyant gusto, and sometimes they are quite original, but as we cut-in to each of his blood-spouting sculptures it’s pretty clear that that’s what they are. Similarly the fight scenes never really show the point of impact onscsreen:  we see the wind-up, hear the sound effect, then cut to someone falling on the floor. This is particularly funny given that one of the featurettes is on choreography of the main fight scene.

Speaking of which, the extras on the DVD are pretty generous and further underscore that the cast and crew had a great time making this exercise in low-budget gore-driven entertainment. There’s a segment with Guastini, but also the “behind the scenes” interviews that also focuses on his work. There’s a gag reel and a silly music video with the band featured in the film, and all of this supports the idea that this is practically a tongue-in-cheek homage to the gore greats of yesteryear such as Joel Reed.

Oh, and one more thing:have patience with Neighbor—just when it seems to be slightly getting repetitive and you’re wondering where it’s going about half-way through, the plot takes us on a series of loop-de-loops that make us question how reliable our point-of-view characters is. I won’t say anything more than that, but it’s just another instance of the film being more inventive than it strictly has to be.