Lopez's 'Boy' an unimaginative plunge into paranoia

Rob Cohen's "The Boy Next Door" turns out to be a domestic thriller just about as disappointingly conventional and unimaginatively hackneyed as its disappointingly conventional and unimaginatively hackneyed title.

This hormonal-student-gone-wild tale becomes so desperate for shocks that it revives the old horror device of somebody tossing a screeching cat on to the set for an easy jump. (The cat toss in "Halloween II" still rules as the best.)

In quick snippets, we see how marital discord has shattered the Peterson family.

"Get out! Get out!" Claire Peterson (Jennifer Lopez) shouts at her hubby Garrett ("Sex in the City" co-star John Corbett) who has been sneaking off to meet a secret "San Francisco treat" for nine months.

"I love you like a sister, but you've got to sign those divorce papers!" Claire's best friend and high school vice-principal Vicki Lansing (comedian-turned-dramatic-actor Kristin Chenoweth) tells her.

Garrett's affair has damaged Claire's feminine self-esteem so much that not even a new pair of leopard skin shoes with 110-inch stiletto heels can make her feel sexy again.

Wait, the 19-year-old great nephew of Claire's wheezy old neighbor Mr. Sanborn (Jack Wallace, playing to incidental comic effect) can.

He's Noah, played by Ryan Guzman, a 27-year-old mixed martial arts fighter and "Step Up" actor whose face, captured at a certain angle, resembles a young Marlon Brando. But not quite a 19-year-old Brando.

Noah becomes best buds with Claire's insecure teenage son Kevin (Ian Nelson in major nerd mode) and serves as his mentor, showing him how to fix car engines and chat up hot classmates.

But Noah has eyes and other parts for the alluring Claire. One weekend when Garrett and Kevin go fishing, Noah baits his hook as well, seducing the vulnerable high school English teacher in a standard-issue R-rated montage of entangled limbs and heavy breathing.

Then, no surprise to anyone who remembers thrillers such as "Fatal Attraction," "Fear" and "The Crush," Noah reveals his true violent and obsessive nature when a shamed Claire tries to break off their relationship the very next morning.

The rest of "The Boy Next Door" ­- written by former federal prosecutor Barbara Curry - descends into paranoid pablum, with stalker Noah rapidly amping up the psychological assaults (such as littering incriminating photos of him and Claire all over her classroom) until things finally disintegrate into bloody murder and cat-tossing.

"The Boy Next Door" came with promising credentials. In addition to Curry's unusual background, director Rob Cohen hails from the world of action movies, having helmed "The Fast and the Furious" franchise startup.

Instead of the criminally realistic, full-bore suspense thriller we might expect, "Boy Next Door" devolves into inadvertently hilarious Hollywood hokum with Noah apparently commandeering the boy's restroom during the Fall Fling dance so he can terrorize poor Claire, providing that nobody else needs to heed nature's call for an extended period of time.

Cohen falls back on underwhelming, routine horror film contrivances (Claire wanders into a dark house where the lights don't work) while Curry recycles generic, overused dialogue such as "Trust me!" "This is crazy," "You think this is some kind of game?" and "I can't do this!" (Somehow, Curry missed the ever-popular "That's what I'm talkin' about!")

The obvious moral to this story? Friends don't let former federal prosecutors write screenplays.

“The Boy Next Door”

★

Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Ryan Guzman, John Corbett, Kristin Chenoweth, Ian Nelson

Directed by: Rob Cohen

Other: A Universal Pictures release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations, violence. 91 minutes