It currently holds a 27% 'rotten' rating on RottenTomatoes. The adaptation was seen as 'uninspired' by critics. Unfolding as a slow burn, The House Next Door is an atypical haunted house story that still manages to keep you petrified for all four hundred of its pages. In 2006, The House Next Door was adapted into a made-for-TV movie starring Lara Flynn Boyle and Mark-Paul Gosselaar. King's extensive synopsis is supplemented by a detailed statement written by Siddons herself that reveals some of the novel's themes. In his book Danse Macabre, noted horror author Stephen King writes at length on the novel, saying it's a contemporary ghost story with Southern Gothic roots and one of the best genre novels of the 20th century. The novel ends with Colquitt and Walter awaiting their (presumed) deaths in the house, after killing its architect (who, they discover, is a carrier of the evil that's in the house - and that evil will infect everything he builds for the rest of his life). By telling the world, the Kennedys have summoned its dangerous wrath. However, the house is now powerful enough to protect itself.

The pair decide to go public with their story - and risk their own reputations and careers - to warn others about the house's dangerous power. Even those who only visit the house - including Colquitt and Walter - find themselves the victims of shocking tragedy. In just under two years, three owners - the Harralsons, Sheehans, and Greenes - have their lives destroyed by scandal, madness, and murder while living in the home. Soon, Colquitt suspects a terrible force resides in the house next door. They meet the architect and owners shortly after learning about the home, see the plans, and decide it's a beautiful house. Colquitt and Walter are dismayed at their loss of privacy and quiet, but resigned to the inevitable. They learn from a neighbor that a contemporary home is going up on the lot next to theirs.

The novel is told from the point of view of Colquitt 'Col' Kennedy, a well-to-do middle-aged woman who lives with her husband Walter in a quiet, affluent Atlanta neighborhood.

It was first published by Simon & Schuster and became a New York Times bestseller. The House Next Door is a 1978 horror novel written by Anne Rivers Siddons.

The house next door siddons