An interracial couple move into what seems like a suburban haven until their neighbour, a black policeman raising his kids single-handed on a tight rein, starts to turn the screw on their relationship and lives, fuelled by indignation at their co-habiting existence.LaBute's directorial debut back in 1997, In the Company of Men, demonstrated a keen awareness of the real poisons that can run through people's souls, in a dog-eat-dog framework. In the light of some of the debacles that have followed, most notably the bottom of the barrel that his last film represented, i.e. the godawful remake of The Wicker Man, Lakeview Terrace could charitably be viewed as something of a return towards serious film-making. In this it fails on a big scale.
It should not have ended up as a psycho stalker pic like Pacific Heights, which it ends up resembling (and to its detriment by comparison, being far more muddled). But any real debate on racial divisions becomes badly lost by the end, probably not helped by the casting of Samuel L. Jackson as the racist cop, set out with instructions to just exude his customary menace throughout until flipping.
4/10
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