By George & Josh Bate
The Clovehitch Killer ranks among the most underappreciated thrillers of the past 10 years. Director Duncan Skiles’ film about a teenager who begins to suspect that his father is an infamous serial killer is chilling, unsettling, patient in its pacing, and unpredictable. The vexing suspense of The Clovehitch Killer, which Stephen King himself described as “not for the faint of the heart,” means that any film with Skiles’ name attached to it will immediately grab our attention. And now, seven years after his last film, Skiles returns to the director’s chair for Neighborhood Watch, a psychological thriller meets buddy comedy with real heart and an empathic depiction of mental illness.
Neighborhood Watch (formerly titled Nowhere Men) stars Jack Quaid, making this the rising star’s whopping third film in just four months of 2025. Quaid plays Simon, a down-on-his-luck man struggling with various psychotic symptoms, including auditory and visual hallucinations and word salad. One day, Simon is walking home when he witnesses the kidnapping of a young woman. Due to this mental health history, Simon’s police report is dismissed, forcing him to go to his next-door neighbor Ed (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) for help. Having been recently fired from his job as a security guard at a community college, Ed is also down-on-his-luck and, despite his doubts over Simon’s account, decides to help the embattled young man investigate the woman’s disappearance.
Setting Neighborhood Watch apart from other films/shows with similar narratives is its approach to serious mental illness. The first scene of the film sees Quaid’s character Simon interview for a job at a local diner, which is soon disrupted as Simon begins to experience visual hallucinations of a disturbing man across from him, hear things that aren’t actually there, and produce an unintelligible blend of random words and phrases, a symptom of schizophrenia and some neurological disorders known as word salad. Neighborhood Watch deserves immense credit for depicting schizophrenia (although the disorder is never explicitly named) with incredible humanity and empathy. This isn’t a film intended to ostracize or other someone with a serious mental illness; instead, it serves as a devastating portrait of the enduring struggles yielded by such a disorder and, as we will get to later on, how reprieve from distress can eventually arise.
Right off the bat, it is clear that Neighborhood Watch features a version of Jack Quaid we’ve never seen before. Although we admire his work in projects like The Boys, Companion, and Novocaine, Quaid has never truly amazed us, often delivering performances that feel too similar to one another. Neighborhood Watch marks a stark change for Quaid and, in turn, the film that entirely changes our perspective on the actor. That is to say, we get the Jack Quaid hype after watching Neighborhood Watch. Quaid delivers a career best, awards-worthy performance here. He deftly captures the inner turmoil of a man deeply struggling with symptoms of schizophrenia, while never once overdoing his performance. Aided by an empathic and understated script from Sean Farley, Quaid takes on the role of Simon with admirable seriousness and sincerity, a contrast to some who may have leaned more heavily into the possible ill-informed humor this kind of role affords. As the film progresses and the mystery unravels, Quaid subtly taps into a range of different emotions that further deepen what is already an outstanding performance.
Side-by-side with Quaid is Jeffrey Dean Morgan. The fellow The Boys alum plays a character representative of a different kind of struggle than Quaid’s Simon. Morgan’s Ed has been forcibly removed from his position as a college security guard, and yet still finds himself at the college policing mundane matters as a means to give himself purpose. Ed is bitter, lonely, and introduced as a rather unpleasant man. When Simon comes to Ed and asks him for help in finding the missing woman, Ed exhibits reluctance toward Simon and, akin to society more generally, dismisses Simon as a “loony.”
Although the mystery of the missing woman intrigues, the relationship between Quaid’s Simon and Morgan’s Ed proves to be the film’s most compelling element. Although Ed initially treats Simon with hostility, over the course of the film, the two men change as a result of the other’s presence. Neighborhood Watch makes for a strange spin on the buddy comedy genre, but one that applies the tried-and-tested formula (i.e., two men who don’t like each other at first, but grow closer over time) to perfection. What results is a deeply touching journey for the characters, one that combats stigma toward mental health and really tugs at the heartstrings. There is a redemptive, almost feel-good quality about Neighborhood Watch, a decided change from director Skiles’ last film.
Neighborhood Watch isn’t entirely clouded with overt emotion and serious subject matter though. Skiles’ film has a real sense of humor to it, which manifests itself largely as an entertaining back-and-forth between Simon and Ed. The dialogue is written in a way that it produces laughs consistently, while also progressively conveying Ed’s changing attitude toward Simon and mental illness.
Simon and Ed’s relationship evolves as the two collaborate to solve a mystery. Only Simon witnesses the abduction of the young woman and, given his mental health history, is quickly dismissed by others, including Ed initially. However, Ed is desperate for a thrill, something that taps into his desire for law enforcement, and Simon brings that right to his doorstep. The mystery they find themselves unraveling isn’t anything groundbreaking, although its realistic, boots-on-the-ground approach works really well. Simon and Ed have nothing to go on but a potential license plate number, which leads to an investigation full of dead-ends. In keeping its mystery grounded, director Skiles and screenwriter Farley provide Neighborhood Watch with a more realistic quality, mirroring what it would probably actually be like if someone did indeed witness an abduction and only had a license plate to go off of. Where the mystery goes features a few surprises and, while playing out a tad too simplistically, still manages to hook one’s interest.
VERDICT: 8/10
Director Duncan Skiles follows The Clovehitch Killer, one of the most underappreciated thrillers in the past 10 years, with Neighborhood Watch, a psychological thriller meets buddy comedy meets mental health commentary with real heart. After various performances that failed to get us to see what all the hype about Jack Quaid was all about, the actor delivers a career-best, awards-worthy turn in a role that approaches serious mental illness with kindness and empathy and that allows Quaid to flex a variety of different acting muscles. Quaid’s screen partner Jeffrey Dean Morgan similarly produces a winning performance as a bitter ex-security guard who grows to understand and care over the course of the film. Although the central mystery compels without breaking new ground, the ultimate triumph of Neighborhood Watch lies in the relationship between Quaid and Morgan’s characters, which proves to be as touching as it is humorous. As a psychological thriller, Neighborhood Watch works well, but, as a buddy dramedy, it overwhelmingly excels and will leave a lasting impression.