The quiet and seemingly harmless white beautiful houses with green lawns and rosebushes in the suburbs are always a good scene for the most terrifying thrillers. It’s that contrast between the façade and what’s under the surface, the thought that something that otherwise looks nice and shiny usually hides the deepest of secrets and the most shocking facts.

This is what director Neil LaBute counted on when shooting his latest film, “Lakeview Terrace,” a story that depicts fear, ambition, racism, and ultimately madness.

Like all self-respecting thrillers, it all starts on a sunny day in a middle-class suburb east of Los Angeles, as two neighbors watch how a young interracial couple is moving on the block. It all seems so quiet, the so perfect, almost too perfect to be true. Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa Mattson (Kerry Washington) have the misfortune of moving right next-door to race-separatist and intolerable neighbor and LAPD officer, Abel, who soon manages to make their life a living hell.

Abel, played by Samuel L. Jackson, is a widower raising his two children on his own and a man who doesn’t like it when his rules are not followed and who gets especially mad whenever somebody stands up to him and defies him.

Racism is a recurring theme in this movie produced by Will Smith, as it shows all the aspects of seeing differences between skin colors. Abel doesn’t like white and doesn’t understand and disapproves of mixes, while white boy Chris feels overpowered and acts differently when coming in contact with a powerful black man, like his new neighbor and, as his wife notices, even his father in law, "which is a bit of racism as well," LaBute comments. Prejudice about interracial marriages, multiethnic communities and values of bad and good are depicted throughout the story.

Another source of distress in the movie is the common fear of the man living next-door, especially in such private and intimate places like the suburbs, where the block functions almost like a family. The neighbor could be a mad man, a killer or, worse, a cop, which leaves you completely helpless, as there is nowhere to turn if you just won’t give up and put up the “for sale” sign.

At first, Abel is content with giving Chris a few "friendly" warnings about any inappropriate behavior. But once it becomes clear that the two don't see eye to eye, Abel does a few things to make the Mattsons know they're not welcome, making this rather usual problem a war where no rules apply, especially when the attacker has the law on his side, literally, with the whole police department looking the other way.

The story builds up tension up until the end when things get completely out of hand and when the initial issues don’t matter anymore, but only serve as an excuse for fighting and winning, by all means, the right to keep living on the Lakeview Terrace.