Next Door A.K.A. Naboer
(2005) 75 min.
Rated: NR (sex, nudity, gore)
Country: Norway
Director: Pål Sletaune
Stars: Kristoffer Joner, Cecilie A. Mosli, Julia Schach
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★☆☆
John’s girlfriend has just left him and he finds himself a neighbor to a pair of strange but attractive sisters.
Synopsis:
John (Joner) who lives in an apartment, has been dumped by his girlfriend, Ingrid, who has moved on and is with her new boyfriend Åke.
While coming home one day his eye is caught by a pretty woman who lives on the same floor as he does. She introduces herself as Anne and asks him to move a cabinet in her apartment. He goes to her apartment and attempts to move the heavy cabinet. Anne’s sister Kim also lives there and introduces herself.
Anne stops John and asks him to drink some wine, which he does, and they talk about the reasoning behind moving the cabinet in front of a door. The girls confess to know all about John’s girlfriend dumping him. And he leaves quickly back to his apartment.
Anne knocks on his door asking him to watch over her sister Kim. She says that Kim had been assaulted by a man who lived in John’s apartment previously. That they tried to press charges but no one believed her and so she stays in the apartment afraid to leave it. John agrees to watch over Kim for the time it’ll take Anne to fetch the medicine.
Once he enters the apartment, he finds Kim listening to music. She says that she isn’t Anne’s sister and John says Anne told him about her assault. Kim asks if she seems like a person who has been assaulted and fondles his crotch with her hand. John is startled and moves towards the door, but it’s locked and Kim pulls the key away and runs.
John walks through the cluttered and labyrinthine apartment. There’s trash in a room with a window where a phone is ringing. He picks it up and Kim is on the other end of the line. She says that he’s been there before but doesn’t recognize it. John demands the key and Kim threatens to hang up on him.
Kim taunts him saying he was sad when his girlfriend left. Kim says his girlfriend cheated on him. Kim then says she wishes she had a man as certain as John. She instructs him in how to find the keys hidden in the room. John then wanders down a hall into another room where Kim is.
Kim tells him a story of how she had sex with 3 guys at the same time. She laughs and claims it’s just a story. Then she tells him to sit next to her. John does so and she caresses him and slaps him, then punches him. He hits her back, but she pulls him close again. They’re both bleeding from their noses, and start to make out. They have violent sex which quietly sees and walks away from. After their sex, John sees himself in the mirror, bloodied.
John sobs after seeing how violent and bloodied he is. He takes a shower at his apartment and moves on into the next day. At work, his co-workers notice how bruised up he looks. He tries to take on more paperwork so he won’t go home as early.
John remember a conversation he had with Ingrid as she was leaving. Ingrid tells him that she told her new boyfriend, Åke, about her scarred arm. John claims it was an accident that he poured a pot of coffee on her but Ingrid feels that it wasn’t. John said that he took her to the emergency room and she says he did not. Ingrid says that they had sex for the first time in six months directly after the arm burn.
Ingrid also claims that one of the ways John got sexually aroused was if she told him she had sex with other men.
After thinking about that past scene, John visits his neighbors Anne and Kim. He starts to notice that his dining room looks similar to theirs. Anne pulls away a plate of food that mirrors what John had eaten earlier.
Anne tells John that Kim wants to talk to him and as he enters a hall Anne locks a door behind him. John walks further in, seeing a brief glimpse of another man in the hall and finally finding Kim. Kim asks him why he hit her and John says that she hit him too. Kim says that he’s stronger than her and could’ve held her arms down. She tries to kiss him again but then moves away.
Further in a hall John sees Anne on a couch talking to a man. They have the same conversation that Kim had with John earlier before they had sex. Anne gets up and kisses the man and he punches her. At this John runs away and the man follows him. He pulls his hand out and introduces himself as Åke.
Åke talks about Ingrid and asks John if he’s okay, but he does this with an intimidating aura. He hands John the keys to exit the hall. Åke follows him out and corners him telling him how Ingrid told him about the coffee and how it’s inexcusable. He puts John in a headlock. Anne walks in and tells John that he’s already done it. Doesn’t he remember?
Anne and Åke push him into a room that looks exactly like his apartment. He opens the door and inside is a bedroom. Under the sheets is a dead girl who looks like Ingrid.
He hears screaming outside the apartment and goes outside to find that he has no neighbor. There’s no door there.
Later his co-worker, Peter, comes to his door, but John won’t let him inside. Peter asks about how sick John looks and the odor in his apartment. John panics and closes up the door, screaming at Peter to go away.
While walking in his apartment, John recalls hitting Åke and killing him. He walks to the bathroom and sees the body of Åke on the floor.
John then recalls how he was trying to stop Ingrid from leaving him. She was trying to call for Åke to help her and John ended up strangling her to death on the floor.
Outside of the apartment Peter and the landlord are struggling to get inside the apartment.
John sits at the end of the bed in his bedroom. He’s not sure what to do next. He hears the reassuring voice of Ingrid. She asks if he’s angry and he says he’s not. She beckons him to bed with her. He undresses and tells reassures her that he would never hurt her in any way. She replies that she knows. John curls up in bed with the naked corpse of Ingrid.
Review:
Nicely shot and very claustrophobic Naboer is good at tension building and storytelling. The strange sisters and what they truly are is a treat to watch if you aren’t too put off by the idea of violent punching sex being in a movie.
This film is rather short and to the point, but it does rather get the job done. Joner plays the part of a meek and confused man rather well and he does seem to gain a bit of sympathy despite the reality and severity of the situation at hand.
This thriller with a twist ending isn’t bringing anything new to the table, but damn if it wasn’t at least entertaining to watch the pieces unfold and settle into a broken, broken man.