Author: Dan Stalcup

It’s not often you can honestly describe a film as both “exploitative” and “restrained,” but The Perfect Neighbor lives in an unsettling overlap — and gets a lot of its magnetic power from the fact that it pushes past tasteful boundaries in some areas pulls back in others.

Every time a Scandinavian director gets praised for making a film “reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman,” I brace myself for two hours of immaculate misery and a big, chilly lesson about how people are flawed and feelings are difficult.

I am clenching my jaw trying to resist making the obvious joke about the runtime.