Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

I read Anne Rivers Siddons's excellent book some years ago. Stephen King, in his essay DANSE MACABRE, refers to the novel as one of the best haunted house stories ever written, and he is correct. Unfortunately, in translation from the printed page to the small screen, quite a bit is lost.The basic plot remains intact, happily: a young, hot-shot architect (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) builds a new, contemporary house on a vacant lot next door to the Kennedys, Col and her husband Walker, who frame the story and serve as the narrators (Here is where the inexplicable differences begin: in the novel, Col was Colquitt and Walker was Walter, and the book is told in first-person by Colquitt). During the course of the next year and a half or so, three couples occupy the house, and each of them suffers terrible tragedy, leading Col to the conclusion that there is something malevolent about the house.She's right, but some of the terror has been diluted by two things: the choice to make this a television movie, and the choice to update it by nearly thirty years (the novel was published in 1978). Had it been made as a feature film set in the Atlanta suburb of the original late-Seventies novel, perhaps they could have captured the indescribable creepiness of the book.The cast isn't much help, either. Lara Flynn Boyle leads the proceedings as Col, but she seems miscast (To be fair to Boyle, Siddons never actually gives a physical description of Colquitt in the novel, but Boyle is not what I myself pictured), and worse, she underplays the role so severely that she often appears comatose. And the massive amounts of collagen plumping up her lips on one side don't help matters any either; in some scenes her mouth is such a distraction it is easy to miss what is going on. Still, there are moments when her dreamy, almost-hypnotized stare does send a chill through you as you realize what the house next door might be doing to her, never mind the neighbors. And Colin Ferguson is just about right as her husband; he wisely plays his role at the same emotional level so as not to upstage her or make Walker seem foolish.Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is not worth talking about. In the novel, the effect of the malevolent house was felt by eight of the neighbors on the street, and each, especially the women, reacted in his/her own way. The supporting cast in this telefilm is so homogeneous that unless Boyle says their names it is hard to tell them apart. A pity, because Siddons described them quite vividly.Mark-Paul Gosselaar as the architect was probably cast to pull in the young girls, but he is probably the worst choice of all. For starters, he still can't act. He couldn't as a kid on "Saved by the Bell;" he couldn't on "NYPD Blue;" and he still can't. All he can do is pose and look pretty. Which he does very well, except that the role does not call for it. The architect wasn't unattractive in the novel, but he certainly wasn't a pretty boy like Gosselaar.I can't say I hated it. I loved the novel, and there's still enough of the novel left to make this worth sitting through on a rainy afternoon if you've nothing better to do. But I'd sooner recommend reading the novel; you'll get all the shivers that way, and you won't think Stephen King has terrible taste in horror stories.

It would help to know why it took so long for a book as movie-ready' as "The House Next Door" to be adapted for film or television. The book was copyrighted in 1978. One reason could be problems designing 'the house'. The house in this Lifetime film is really so ugly that I can't imagine anyone buying it. In fact it's so ugly that someone would probably have come and destroyed it as soon as it was built.I'm not crazy about horror genre books, but this one was hard to put down when I came across it around ten years ago. The main characters are not the kind of people to look for anything occult in life, and this is one of the book's strengths. They are not people who would conclude that the architect was some type of demon..(or the devil personified) without witnessing and analyzing the events described so well in the book. However, it is a downbeat book for the most part, and I don't think that appeals to the people who run Lifetime. Maybe someone will come up with another version of the book in years to come. A better house..better music..a better screenplay and darker lighting...would certainly help.

When I heard that this movie was coming out the night before Halloween, I was very excited. When I found out that it was a book, written in 1978, I had to read it before seeing the movie. I'm sure the movie would have been much different to me if I had not read the book. The writers actually did a good job of staying true to the main plot of the book, with minor differences, naturally. I think the thing that disappointed me the most about the movie was Boyle playing the role of Col. I'm not a big fan of Boyle, and it seems that no matter what the mood during the movie, she's always trying to use her over-plumped lips, and darkly makeup-ed eyes to make herself seem super sexy. Indeed, I think that the movie held true to the genuine creepiness of the house. My favorite subplot was the Sheehan family (which is so weird b/c the son was killed in Iraq and in current events there is Casey Sheehan whose mother went on a huge anti-Iraq tirade). In the book, obviously the war was not Iraq, but rather, Vietnam, and when the house turns on that video of the son in the helicopter, I was truly creeped out. Overall, I was impressed with the movie, in that it followed the book very well.

An ultra-modern house in an affluent neighborhood appears to be the cause of each of its inhabitants bizarre (and deadly) behavior. Or at least that is what Lara Flynn Boyle's character, Col Kennedy, argues. After a series of deadly occurrences in a gargantuan house next door, Col knows something has got to give. Mark-Paul Gosselaar also stars as the mysterious architect.My opinion: The House Next Door works because of Lara Flynn Boyle and the locations (beautiful house) and stylish sets. Boyle is a talented and dynamic actress, not to mention absolutely stunning. She brings credibility to her character and makes the film intriguing. Without her, it would have failed. "It's so alive" declares a prospective buyer in reference to the house. Yes, it is alive. But the story itself is not so much.Barring Boyle's presence, not much is happening here, as an enormous amount of the movie is spent watching or waiting to see how the house will affect its current owners. The results are predictable. But I liked it anyway. The cinematography lends the film a polished look. 8/10 on account of Boyle, the premise of an evil ultra-modern house, the locations and cinematography, and set decoration and wardrobe.