Tubi’s ‘Get Off My Lawn’ Is a Ridiculous Suburban Thriller [Review]

It’s always enjoyable to watch a simple premise taken to outrageous lengths, particularly when the film in question is aware of how silly it is.

That’s the case for Get Off My Lawn (2025), a Tubi film from writers Arland Digirolamo and Alana Wexler and director Amara Cash.

The premise is simple: couple Jackie (Camila Banus) and Jason (Tahj Mowry) move into their first home after eight years together, armed with aspirations of starting a family. When their lowball offer on the giant suburban home is (surprisingly) accepted, they think they’re dreaming.

Naturally, it’s not long before the dream becomes a nightmare courtesy of 17 year old Alec Todd (Jonah Hwang), the neighbour whose “gramps” lived in the house before. Alec believes that the house should have passed to him, but his abusive father Denny (Max E. Williams) put it on the market instead. This forced Alec to convince his pushover mother Sharon (Lydia Look) to sell it to Jackie and Jason instead and begin working on a short term strategy to drive them out.

Of course, Alec is a complete nutjob who immediately becomes the neighbour from hell. Things begin innocuously enough when Alec invites himself in to tells the newly engaged couple how gramps liked to keep house. The weirdness continues when Alec becomes irrationally angry that they move the furniture around or take down the house “rules” from above the mantle. Then things really escalate when J&J begin making substantial changes, including moving the backyard plaque that commemorates gramps’ death.

At this point Alec decides to wage war on the new couple. And what begins as pranks quickly shifts to become increasingly violent and homicidal.

Despite hiding the identity of the murderer of realtor Pearl Gladstone (Melissa Jo Bailey) in the cold open, Get Off My Lawn has no aspirations of disguising the film’s antagonist. Alec is coded as a weird kid from the get-go – his attitude is over the top cheery and artificial from his first interaction with Jason and Jackie – so there’s never a question that he’s bad news.

In a more conventional horror or thriller, it would be a problem that Alec doesn’t behave like a normal teenager at all. His best friend Ethan (Tyler Lofton) and girlfriend Ray (Kayla Maisonet) stand in stark contrast: they smoke pot, they drink alcohol, and they talk about having sex. These are foreign concepts to Alec, who is vaguely queer-coded and extremely traditional, even down to his wardrobe, which consists of collared polos and khakis. In essence, Alec feels like a socially conservative adult from the 50s/60s (think: the values and preoccupations of Leave it to Beaver or Pleasantville).

Alec is an utterly ridiculous character, but the film wisely knows it. He is a larger than life, especially his earnest belief – and oft-repeated mantra – that rules must be followed or there will be consequences. It helps that Hwang is completely committed to playing this highly unusual, out of touch teen with a straight face.

Mowry and Banus don’t fare nearly as well. They’re aggressively fine; the reality is that they’re doing exactly what the film requires of them, but they’re simply the “straight” couple on the receiving of the madness. Most of the time all they’re asked to do is react to the escalating madness and fight with each other (Jackie wants to move out; Jason warns that they’ve sunk all of their money into the house and can’t afford to leave).

It’s all pretty standard and not particularly interesting, which is why Get Off My Lawn belongs to its villain and its supporting cast, all of whom are either 1) utterly unbelievable, 2) complete caricatures, or 3) both.

Alec’s friends firmly belong in the first category. Ethan and Ray go along with his plan to drive J&J out of the house using a series of filmed pranks that they plan to monetize on social media. Never mind that they’re frequently filming illegal activities and their chicken masks don’t do much to disguise their identities, or that it would be extremely difficult to accrue enough wealth from a few online videos to <checks notes> buy a house.

No, the biggest suspension of disbelief is that Ethan and Ray don’t really comment on or defuse Alec’s increasingly outrageous behaviour. At one point Ethan elaborates on how important his 10+ year friendship with the villain is, but surely he and Ray would draw the line at threatening Jason and Jackie in bed with a baseball bat? Never mind the fact that Ray only once comments about Alec’s preoccupation with rules and pranks as opposed to, you know, spending time alone with her?

These unbelievable characterizations are easily set aside, however, thanks to characters who fall into the second category. Take Catherine (Christine Dunford), the acerbic, dog-obsessed neighbour who is nearly run over by Jackie…twice. Catherine is chiefly interested in only two subjects: her tiny dog Brandy Alexander, and talking shit about Alec whenever she has the chance.

Naturally she’s on the chopping block.

Add in a comedically useless iced coffee-drinking-police officer (Ben Zelevansky) and a soundtrack that regularly underlines the humour in key scenes (you may ask yourself in one set piece: is that an accordion?) and it’s clear that Get Off My Lawn knows exactly what it’s doing. And that’s before the gonzo climax featuring a variety of gardening tools such as shears, duct tape, a meat fork, and a weed whacker.

Is it a tense, suburban mystery? No.

Is it a good horror film? No.

It is ridiculously silly and enjoyably self-aware? Absolutely.

And sometimes that’s exactly what you’re looking for.