And yet, last Friday also saw the release of Rob Cohen’s The Boy Next Door, an erotic thriller that isn’t as sexually charged as it is accidentally hilarious. For all intents and purposes, the film plays like an episode of the How Did This Get Made podcast waiting to happen. Home alone one weekend, Claire gives into the sexual tension between them (such as it is) and they spend the night together. Immediately after this scene, she tells Noah that there’s no chance of their one night stand turning into anything more. His response is to bloody his knuckles by punching the bedroom wall, which tells you about how well this conscious uncoupling is going to go from his end. What follows could be broadly described as a gender-flipped take on Fatal Attraction, with Noah trying to drive a wedge between Claire and her family and friends, but sadly, Ryan Guzman is no Glenn Close. It’s so derivative, bits of it could be compared to any number of erotic thrillers, the sub-genre which really generated heat through the 1990s from Basic Instinct onwards and took a cold shower some fourteen years later with 2006’s Basic Instinct 2. From start to finish the script, by Barbara Curry, is something of a howler, but the clunky delivery by the actors feels like an oversight from the director. Lopez and Guzman generate a little heat between them early on, but Cohen (who is better known for action fare such as xXx and The Fast & The Furious) somehow makes the pivotal tumble look tacky and dispassionate before eagerly digging into psycho-thriller ridiculousness from there. It’s not helped by an unfortunate predilection for sub-James Bond innuendo. “I love your mother’s cookies” is a particularly flaccid example, but Guzman delivers every one of these with implied malice and a cocky grin. Personally, I laughed out loud when Claire told Noah to stop stalking her and he sheepishly snarled back- “I can’t… I live next door.” To paraphrase an old saying, you can wait ages for one erotic thriller and then two come along in a row. But in the wake of the box office success enjoyed by 50 Shades Of Grey, also a Universal film, it almost looks like the studio have come to bury the genre rather than revive it. Looking at both films, at least The Boy Next Door is more satisfying and less confused about its characters than 50 Shades, but Cohen and Curry aren’t lumbered with such terrible source material. Even if that only leaves them to blame for the more unintentionally comedic bits, it’s certainly better at doing what it says on the tin than the more troubled blockbuster equivalent. All of that said, this is strictly for schlock value only. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.