Jacqueline Cutler, Tribune Media Services
Lara Flynn Boyle stars in 'The House Next Door', airing Monday night, at 8, on Lifetime.
Haunted houses are supposed to be steeped in history. Ghosts of the long-dead should rattle about attics, flitting by turrets and scaring anyone who dares to venture beyond the top floor.
Writer Anne Rivers Siddons blasts that notion with her terrific thriller, The House Next Door, which Lifetime uses as the basis for its Monday, October 30, movie of the same title, starring Lara Flynn Boyle (The Practice), Colin Ferguson (Eureka) and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (NYPD Blue).
In this spooky tale, a beautiful, contemporary house shatters the peace of an upscale neighbourhood. Col and Walker Kennedy (Boyle and Ferguson) adore each other. They have no children and live in a lovely home, which abuts a wooded lot. Many have tried to develop it, but the terrain vanquishes them.
Brash and talented architect Kim, (Gosselaar) however, creates an exquisite home that seems to grow from the land it complements. Everyone who walks through its open spaces and gleaming floors falls in love with it. Yes, the house seems to have some rather human qualities. Not to worry, though; this is not one of those films where the house jumps to life and starts gobbling inhabitants.
Rather, it is much more subtle. No one realises it for a while, and though the movie is slow, it comes together in the second half.
Dreadful fates befall all of the families that live there. Col figures out that something evil is afoot and spends a while trying to convince her neighbours and Walker.
Skeptical audience
"Walker is very practical, very logical and a very loving husband," Ferguson says. "And not in a cliched way. He loves his wife and wants to give her the benefit of the doubt, and because he loves her, he can't sign off on the fact that the house is evil and he's always looking for the way out. For the first half of it, he is the skeptical audience, and she has to win him over. And when he gets won over, the audience should be won over, and we also enter the haunted ride together."
