Terrace pretends to be about the persecution of a mixed-race couple when really it's about how anyone might react living next door to the shark from Jaws.
Comment
09/19/08
Lakeview Terrace (2008)
47
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:150
Fresh:70
Rotten:80
Average Rating:5.5/10
Consensus: This thriller about a menacing cop wreaking havoc on his neighbors is tense enough but threatens absurdity when it enters into excessive potboiler territory.
Australian Theatrical Release:
Jan 29, 2009 Wide
US Box Office: $39,263,506
Synopsis: A quick perusal of any of LAKEVIEW TERRACE's promotional materials--its nervy trailer, its foreboding (and painterly) dawn-hued poster featuring Samuel L. Jackson looking less-than-neighborly in... [More]
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington, Jay Hernandez
Director: Neil LaBute
Reviews for Lakeview Terrace
81 - 100 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
The movie is purportedly a thriller, a la Unlawful Entry or Pacific Heights, but the whole thing is so listless and mechanical, watching it is a curiously dispiriting experience.
09/19/08
Lakeview Terrace is a lot of things you never expected it to be. And most of those things are smart, complicated and provocative in the best way.
09/19/08
Lakeview Terrace may smack of cheap exploitation, but it’s pretty great exploitation.
09/19/08
Lakeview Terrace winds itself into a predictable tale, but the performances set this one apart from the genre pack.
09/19/08
A house of cards only stands still if carefully placed, but with 'Lakeview Terrace', too many false and quick moves doomed it.
09/19/08
As Lakeview Terrace moves forward, it becomes clear this isn't a movie about the shuffling of black and white; it's a film about abusing power and desperately clinging to the status quo. It's a film about the fear of the future.
09/19/08
Lakeview Terrace's resistance to being one thing suggests the time has come when a movie featuring an interracial couple can no longer be merely about race and racism.
09/19/08
This is being marketed as a slam-bang entertainment, but it's also one of the toughest and most relevant movies of the year.
09/19/08
The movie might have something to say about black racism, but the conversations go nowhere, and the cliches of the genre take over.
09/19/08
The film quickly exhausts its prickly humor and blows everything it has to say about class and generation gaps and race.
09/19/08
This is the kind of movie where every bad guy has his decent side, every hero is merely half-hearted, and the genre beats we except from the story come buried in sidebars of dense characterization and unnecessary sideways subplotting.
09/19/08
Oh, to live to see such a rarity: a horror movie for grownups! No mad slashers... [j]ust the plausible pettiness of human nastiness slowly, inexorably building to a tragedy of suburban proportions.
09/19/08
Director Neil Labute may be a hired hand on "Lakeview Terrace," but the film fits his oeuvre of men behaving badly
09/19/08
Unfortunately, the feud set in motion here trades on crude sterotypes that are still in play.
09/19/08
Samuel L. Jackson pulls off an extremely terrifying performance in this formulaic thriller which looses all of its sizzle with an AWFUL ending.
09/19/08
Under the microscope of this movie, it takes only the smallest spark of ill will to inflame whatever lies directly below the skin--whatever color that skin happens to be.
09/19/08
A great trio of actors and a talented writer/director inject Lakeview Terrace with enough unexpected left turns to barely keep it worth recommending.
09/19/08
Even references to 'Othello' can't salvage this effort past the point of being a made for TV movie.
09/19/08
Considered purely as a formal exercise, Lakeview Terrace is a passable piece of hackwork, with some adequately suspenseful passages.
09/19/08
Top CriticLatest News for Lakeview Terrace
January 17, 2009:
Worst case scenario moviemaking, with interracial mating as the cinematic incendiary device of choice, along with Jackson's honed terror tactics that can make you shrivel with the slightest disapproving snarl. 
More...
January 13, 2009:
Interracial mating as the cinematic incendiary device of choice, and it's not white racists that are made to seethe about cross-racial romance, but oddly enough, black folks. Reality check, please.
More...
December 05, 2008:
UK Critics Consensus: Writers Warm to Madagascar 2; UK Critics Liked Lakeview Terrace
With thirteen new releases in the UK cinemas this weekend, let Rotten Tomatoes help you sort the tinsel from the turkeys. We have animals on the loose in Madagascar: Escape 2... More...
October 20, 2008:
Sam Jackson Talks Lakeview Terrace: Taking The Tough Questions
More...
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