2017’s Thy Neighbor led me to spend way too much time thinking about neighborhood hot tub etiquette.

Amber Reynolds (Jessica Koloian) is the wife of pastor Zach Reynolds (Nathan Clarkson).  Zach used to be fat.  Zach used to pick fights and carry a gun.  However, Zach lost a ton of weight, wrote a book about how he got thin and conquered his anger issues, and is now something of a celebrity.  He’s been invited to be the new pastor at the local megachurch and, upon moving into their new home, Amber makes it a point to bake cookies for all of her new neighbors.  One of the neighbors (Dave Payton) — who is simply called The Neighbor for the majority of the film — doesn’t care much for church but he sure does like those cookies.  Zach thinks that the Neighbor is creepy and he doesn’t want Amber having anything to do with him.  Amber thinks that the Neighbor needs someone to talk to so she invites him to come relax in the hot tub with her.

Seriously….

My neighbors across the street have a hot tub and I’ve pretty much got an open invitation to use it whenever I want.  Many a night, we’ve all relaxed in the hot tub and talked about whatever we felt like talking about at the time.  But I’m also extremely close to my neighbors.  I have a lot in common with my neighbors, as we all graduated from the same college and we tend to have similar cultural and political outlooks.  They’re friends, along with being neighbors and it also helps that we all look in our swimsuits.  And even so, they still got to know me a little before they said, “Hey, feel free to come use our hot tub whenever you feel like it.”  My point is that I have a hard time buying that anyone, regardless of how nice they are or how much they want to help their husband win points around the neighborhood, would invite a total stranger to strip down and join them in the hot tub.  That’s especially true when you’re the mother of a young son and your husband is away from the house and when the stranger in question is kind of creepy and bizarrely aggressive in the way that he talks to people.

Zach is not amused to return home and find the Neighbor in the hot tub.  After the Neighbor leaves, Amber argues that Zach needs to make an effort to reach out to everyone, even creepy people like The Neighbor.  As for The Neighbor, he starts trying to break up Zach and Amber’s marriage by trying to get Zach to lose his temper and trying to convince Amber that Zach is having an affair with a church secretary….

This is not a typical faith-based film.  It’s a thriller, one that conveys its message with a minimum amount of preaching and which features a trio of strong performances from Koloian, Clarkson, and Payton.  The film argues that everyone should be treated with kindness while, at the same time, acknowledging that some people are very, very annoying.  The Neighbor is a total creep but he’s also someone who appears to have spent a good deal of his life being victimized.  Unusually for a film of this sort, Thy Neighbor ends on a rather dark and melancholy note, again acknowledging that things are not always as easy as the movies would have us believe.  Amber is determined to be kind while Zach cannot let go of his suspicions.  In the end, it’s obvious that it’ll take more than a few hours in the hot tub to fix these broken souls.