January 2009 | blackfilm.com | reviews | film | Lakeview Terrace (DVD Review)

This cinematic fiasco rings false from beginning to end, from its patently absurd premise clear through to its unintentionally funny resolution. Unless director Neil LaBute pulled a switcheroo, I’d guess Samuel L. Jackson and Kerry Washington must have known even when they read the script that they had a turkey on their hands.

Get a load of how ridiculous the plot is: Jackson plays Abel “A.T.” Turner, a short-tempered bigot with a very specific prejudice, namely, mixed couples where the man is white and the woman is black. Otherwise, he has plenty of friends of every ethnicity.

Now, on an LAPD cop’s salary, this widower in need of anger management somehow owns a mountaintop home with a view in an upscale section of Los Angeles. At the point of departure, newlyweds Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa Mattson (Washington) buy the house next-door, and wouldn’t you know he’s Caucasian and she’s African-American. Pleasant and attractive, but dumber than dirt, the clueless couple fails to pick up on the fact that A.T. is out to make their lives a living Hell.

Their denseness enables Abel to find meaning in life by secretly torturing them in an ever-escalating series of Geneva Conventions violations. But no matter how depraved A.T. gets, the Stepford-like Mattsons merely question themselves rather than suspect that their many misfortunes might be the work of a racist psycho. Protagonists this dumb don’t deserve an audience’s sympathy, especially when they recycle lame Rodney King poster-speak like “Can’t we all just get along?”

You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to figure out what happens to Abel next, although this pathetic picture is likely to leave you raising Cain.