Neighborhood Watch Movie Review: High on thrills, low on vision

Two of the most popular ways to establish the world in a film are to either introduce the setting and its characters before delving into the story or to drop the audience in the midst of events. Duncan Skiles’ Neighborhood Watch is the latter kind, where we view a particular episode in the lives of its characters. Now, does this strategy work for the film? Yes. Director Skiles crafts a fairly engaging story while ensuring that there are no loopholes. Is it enough? Not exactly.

Director: Duncan Skiles

Cast: Jack Quaid, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Malin Akerman

Streamer: Prime Video

Neighborhood Watch starts with Simon McNally (Jack Quaid) getting back to his life after being stranded in the hospital for ten years. His hospitalisation is due to the fact that he suffers from severe mental illness due to childhood trauma. Simon does not trust his mind as it clouds him with unbearable amounts of negative thoughts, visuals, and word salads. However, when he  witnesses a kidnapping, he is determined to find the girl who was kidnapped, even when the world around him doubts him and is hesitant to believe him, due to his mental illness. By creating insurmountable odds for Simon, the film is able to keep us on our toes and keep us guessing. Simon enlists the help of Ed Deerman (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a former campus security guard and a gambling addict, whose only reason to help Simon is to feel useful again. With this unlikely pair, we are left wondering as to who is the straight man and who is the tramp. But that uncertainty also helps prop up the thrill factor of the story.

Jack Quaid as Simon does not venture far from his typical portrayal of anxious characters, but as Simon, he is able to make the role unique. Simon is always on edge and very reactive to the unpredictability that the world throws at him. He is also plagued by the visions of his father, which insult and demean him and even cause him extreme physical distress. Quaid is able to differentiate between every scenario, not only through expressions, but also through his body language. Morgan, on the other hand, also ventures into new territory in familiar lands. He plays a tough guy, but we do not see his famous character, Negan, from The Walking Dead. We only see the disgruntled Ed. Morgan plays the role of the old man that all of us are familiar with. He is the one who peaked during his career. Now in retirement, not knowing how to spend his days, he is chasing a high that he missed. And in that process, make some poor decisions. Morgan is able to embrace the stupidity that his character possesses without sacrificing an ounce of his experience as a guard.

Neighborhood Watch deftly uses sound design to make the experience more immersive. The film also effectively uses silence for the same season. The voices in Simon’s head are designed in a manner that discomforts us when they disorient him. This discomfort rises when the recurring visuals of Simon’s father are shown. Neighborhood Watch, in a tongue in cheek manner, features a lot of scenes of breaking into places. With two unpredictable characters, the uncertainty is already high, but the silence only pushes the audience to hold their breath.

But even with all such fundamentally right decisions, the film doesn’t do anything new. Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable thriller that doesn’t weigh down on its audience.