Neil LaBute shows his face again after that laughable remake of The Wicker Man with a slick thriller that sparks promisingly at the start but never manages to catch fire.

Star rating: ***
Dir: Neil LaBute
With: Samuel L Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington

Neil LaBute shows his face again after that laughable remake of The Wicker Man with a slick thriller that sparks promisingly at the start but never manages to catch fire.

The terrace of the title is set in a neat suburb of Los Angeles where all the lawns are regulation height and parking etiquette is taken very seriously indeed. Chief among the watchful neighbours is Abel Turner (Samuel L Jackson), a cop by day and, judging by the way he likes to keep his neighbours in line, a cop by night as well.

Into this apparently safe haven move Chris and Lisa (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington). Chris and Lisa embody the new, meritocratic, more tolerant America - she's black, he's white, they both have great jobs and, if that's not enough, a swimming pool in the back yard as well.

An air of menace descends like smog, with Abel, one of LaBute's trademark angry men, being at first iffy then outright aggressive towards the blameless Chris and Lisa.

LaBute throws around some interesting ideas about racial politics, men's need to lock antlers, women's need to placate them, and so on. But the screenplay gets bored with these themes halfway through and the picture, like Abel, becomes increasingly unhinged.