Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Get Off My Lawn’ on Tubi, a Silly Suburban Spoof of Preposterous Thrillers

By John Serba

Considering the reputation of Tubi originals, I half-expected Get Off My Lawn to be a 17-years-too-late mockbuster version of Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino. But no, it’s a campy-kitschy comedy-thriller starring sitcom guy Tahj Mowry (Baby Daddy, Full House) and soap opera lady Camila Banus (Days of Our Lives) as a couple who moves into a lovely suburban home whose former resident is a mentally disturbed teenager bent on making their lives a living heck. It’s a little funny and a little gory and a lot cheesy, but maybe it’ll elicit a few decent laughs?

GET OFF MY LAWN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jackie (Banus) is a paralegal, Jason (Mowry) is a plumber and Alec (Jonah Hwang) is a psycho, and please pronounce that “p” lest my hacky alliteration go plooey. The former two are a cute-ass couple, new to the neighborhood, having bought a nice house that’ll be great for the family they dream of having. The latter is a 17-year-old milk-drinking khakis-and-polo-shirt-wearing loafers-and-no-socks preppy kid with the least trustworthy ear-to-ear grin this side of Jack Nicholson. Welcome to the neighborhood! Oh, by the way, the real estate agent who listed the home was killed in the opening scene, strangled by a POV shot wearing gloves on its hands. Who could’ve done that, I wonder?

Alec used to live in the house with his dear old gramps, who passed away, leaving him devastated. Now he’s stuck with his parents, whose personalities are such bipolar opposites – mom worships her son, dad abuses him – they’re likely in a permanent state of geomagnetic reversal. To gently psychoanalyze the kid, he mourns the loss of the stability gramps provided, and is incapable of processing change in a healthy manner, judging by how upset he gets when Jackie and Jason do something as benign as rearranging the furniture in the house. Otherwise, Alec is energetic and upbeat. Maybe too energetic and upbeat. DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN BALL.

Now, about this real estate arrangement. I know we’re supposed to take Get Off My Lawn about as seriously as a death threat from Daniel Tiger, but Jackie and Jason moved in before closing the deal (not smart!), passed up inspections (dude, what if there’s mold?) and bought the house with all of Gramps’ stuff still in it (ew, creepy). Even the family photos hang on the walls, next to a plaque outlining the rules of the house that Alec and Gramps lived by and that Alec insists Jackie and Jason must live by too. Or else what? Well, they soon find out, when they start asking Alec to cool his jets after he repeatedly drops by uninvited and lets himself in under the guise of being helpful and welcoming. Jason thinks the kid is harmless, but Jackie – well, she’s ready to get a restraining order. Alec responds to the pushback by eliciting his friends to prank Jackie and Jason and record it – to build up their social media following so they can earn big piles of money and Alec can buy the house, naturally – until the pranks start getting nastier and nastier. And of course, before it’s all over, there will be blood.

Photo: ©Tubi/Courtesy Everett Collection

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Remember Cold Creek Manor? Same plot, and it’s just as ridiculous, but considering it was released in 2003, we were supposed to take it seriously. Otherwise, the way Alec’s mother treats him makes me think this could be a Norman Bates or Longlegs origin story.

Performance Worth Watching: Christine Dunford steals a scene or two, playing a goofy neighbor, and Ben Zelevansky is amusing as a local cop who can’t set down his soda long enough to bother investigating a murder.

Memorable Dialogue: Jason dismisses Alec’s increasingly disturbing behavior: “That Gen Z Leave it to Beaver don’t bother me one bit.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Should I look for subtext in a Tubi original, or is my time better spent getting out the teaspoon and digging to China? Get Off My Lawn is probably the best Tubi original I’ve seen, which isn’t saying much, but grading it against The Brutalist or Oppenheimer just doesn’t seem fair. So, contextually speaking, it’s kinda fun, and good for a few yuks if you’re looking for something to watch, free and totally commercially interrupted, while chowing purple monkey dishwasher weed gummies on a slow Tuesday evening. It may have something to say about how Social Media Has Infected Kids These Days, but, hey, get real. That takes more intelligence than this movie showcases. It’s ultimately about nothing more important than the increasingly less-astonishing realization that mid-to-bottom-rung streaming services will greenlight some pretty silly projects and throw a few hundred-thousand bucks at them, because the accounting department says it makes sense.

So maybe Get Off My Lawn is more of a business decision than someone’s creative vision, but everyone involved seems to be having some fun, and that translates reasonably well to the audience. That the run time pushes past 90 minutes is too bad, and the plot predictably escalates and escalates until we get to a stupidly try-hard, gory conclusion. But for those of us with allergies to the poker-facedness of the Preposterous Thriller subgenre (e.g., the aforementioned Cold Creek Manor, or Fatal Attraction, or any Tyler Perry movie that doesn’t feature Perry in a fatsuit), this movie is a reasonably enjoyable spoof of things that take themselves too seriously for their own good. 

Our Call: Remember, this could’ve – and probably should’ve – been way worse! STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.