One of the very first things to hapen in "Lakeview Terrace" is that Abel Turner pauses, in the midst of rising from his bed, to kneel and begin the day with prayer. It should have been obvious right then and there that Abel would turn out to be a Type A homocidal twerp.

Yes, Papa Turner is a nosy hypocrite, a puritanical scold with one finger on the trigger of his police revolver and another one almost certainly wagging admonitively a half-inch beneath the nose of whoever he's talking to.

Hope that didn't spoil the movie for anyone.

Relax. Abel is more sinister than a roomful of circus clowns. He's slimier than a bucket of bacon grease, up-to-no-good-er (upper-to-no-good?) than the Three Stooges in a custard pie factory. The prayer thing is just so that a certain segment of the audience, probably including most of the filmmakers, can nod knowingly and say, "See, it's these freaks who won't stop praying who are rending the very fabric of our nation."

Did I mention the scene where Abel holds forth about his righty political views?

The film's story is that Honest Abel, an LAPD street stalker played with reptilian charisma by Samuel L. Jackson, is bugged by his new neighbors. Chris (Patrick Wilson) is white and Lisa (Kerry Washington), like Abel, is black, although you get the feeling that Abel would be bugged about having them around even if Chris were pink and Lisa were green.

Actually, Chris is pink, a lefty wimp who drives a Prius and shoots pool instead of guns. Come on, movie, you're not even trying.

Abel's intrusiveness is fairly mild at first. His security lights cast their icy blue gleam into Chris and Lisa's master bedroom, and he busts on Chris's love of gangsta rap and the cigarettes that he hides from Lisa.

Predictably, things escalate, just like the wildfires that everyone keeps hearing about on the four o'clock news. In case you aren't paying attention to this keen application of metaphor, director Neil LaBute occasionally points the camera at comically apocalyptic billows of smoke blackening the air above nearby hillsides.

Yes, it's that Neil LaBute, which makes the paint-by-numbers, Bugs-and-Daffy-level feuding seem all the more empty-headed.

It's not as though the home invasion thriller is a fresh brew, after all, and there are probably cave paintings in France that depict humble suburbanites being harassed by corrupt lawmen.

The movie gets a lot of gas from Jackson, who makes Abel far more compelling and sinister than the standard-issue bruiser written up in the screenplay. There are also snatches of barbed conversation that slow down the action and let the characters breathe a little.

The filmmakers seem more interested in asserting their PG-13 rating, however, than in spinning a compelling yarn. There are exactly two utterances of (rhymes with duck), a lot of carefully choreographed violence and a team of nearly naked dancers called in for a police bachelor party while Abel's two children, Plot and Point, are away visiting their aunt. Lucky for them. If only the rest of us could be rescued so easily.

D+

Lakeview Terrace

Director: Neil LaBute

Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington, Jay Hernandez

Running time: 1 hr., 46 min.

Rating: PG-13 for intense thematic material, violence, sexuality, language and some drug references

Location: Opens Friday at theaters everywhere