The nice young couple who stood behind me in the line of people waiting to get into a preview of Lakeview Terrace semi-jokingly suggested they were the ideal audience for this suspenser because they recently sold a house to get away from a hellishly difficult neighbor. Maybe, but their demographic potential would probably have been increased if they’d been interracial. Lakeview Terrace is about one unfortunate such couple (he’s white, she’s black) who are virtually besieged in their new suburban LA home by a twistedly hostile next-door neighbor.

Chris and Lisa (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) are confronted with Abel Turner (Samuel L. Jackson), an African-American single dad of two and an LAPD beat cop who, it all too soon becomes clear, has very serious issues and a chip on his shoulder the size of Plymouth Rock.

Abel is given some backstory to help account for his pathological and escalating belligerence and menace, but this character is so rigidly authoritarian that tragic past events don’t seem nearly sufficient to explicate his actions.

That said, much of the first half or so of this one has a nice, B-movie pacing and efficiency. Playwright and indie film director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men, Nurse Betty) seems to have some knack for this kind of product, early on establishing the arid, hilly, subtly and disconcertedly unreal SoCal milieu evocatively and graduating the tension in a controlled fashion. And Jackson’s portrayal of Abel’s ostensibly genial but deeply and dangerously resentful personality commands most of the scenes he’s in. It’s an impressive star turn, until both he and LaBute seem to get increasingly thwarted by the script, which LaBute didn’t write. Lakeview Terrace resorts to clunky, unconvincing devices, including the ones leading into its somewhat hurried resolution.

This movie might have been an unexpectedly and metaphorically appropriate little pop cultural work for the American political era of Barack Obama, but it dissipates much of that opportunity and its own entertainment potential.

—george sax