December's hardly begun, yet you knew the dream couldn't last: Americans of every race and creed, huddling together, wide-eyed and fluffy like new-born chicks, in the glow of Barack Obama's mother hen vision for America. And then along comes Samuel L Jackson in Lakeview Terrace, a B-movie thriller to spoil the party. He's the kind of angry presence that would put a wrinkle in the president-elect's neatly pressed suit. Jackson plays Abel Turner, a hard-working, widowed, middle-class man who lives with his two daughters in suburban LA. He seems entirely respectable. But it emerges that Abel is not the kind of guy who subscribes to Obama's vision of a post-racial America. He doesn't like the white man; in particular, the white man who moves in next door with a black wife. One can imagine the soothing balm of Obama's "Yes you can", to which Jackson's Abel would presumably respond, "no you can't, motherf**ker".

Lakeview Terrace, then, is one of those thrillers in which a young couple – Patrick Wilson (Chris) and Kerry Washington (Lisa), covered head to toe in newly-married goo – move in to the nuptial home to discover that hell is their new neighbour. But this is directed by Neil LaBute. And if you've seen his earlier (and better) films such as In The Company of Men, or Your Friends and Neighbours, you'll know he doesn't hold much faith in humanity. He didn't write the script (it was penned by Howard Korder and David Loughery) but he injects Lakeview Terrace with his sharp IQ, burrowing under its B-movie skin and infecting it with a provocative, latent racism. And all of it is directed at white people.

Lakeview Terrace is named after the neighbourhood where the LAPD used Rodney King for baton practice. This gives the villain Abel some welcome layers of irony: not only is he black and a bigot, but he is also a member of the LAPD. Boy does Jackson play it up. He booms with menace and a barely contained ironic glee.

Chris and Lisa could be poster children for Obama's new America: they're well-adjusted, upwardly mobile, and happy in their mixed marriage. (Though they don't necessarily have it easy. Lisa's father [Ron Glass] is well-to-do, but he won't make eye contact with his white son-in-law. And you know when he asks her if they are going to have children, it is not because he wants to be a grandad.)

Abel starts off too with a few underhand comments. "Opposites attract," he quips to the raised brow of his new neighbour, who he mocks for listening to hip-hop in his car ("You can listen to that noise all night long, but when you wake up in the morning, you'll still be white"). He leaves the security spotlight on the side of his home switched on all night – it shines straight into the couple's bedroom. Their garage is broken into and car tyres are slashed. Abel attends their housewarming party and quickly cools it with his unsocial chitchat. He makes threats that don't quite sound like threats. And Chris and Lisa stress about what to do – Abel, as he keeps reminding them, is a cop.

Wilson, with his pretty-boy face and toned torso, is often an insipid presence. But here he is ideal – a pussy-foot liberal who smokes secret cigarettes in the car. Which makes Abel's malice even more unwarranted. Jackson munches up his screen time, taking Wilson in his jaws, much in the way you would imagine a T-Rex in playful mood does before devouring a sheep. Jackson has eyeballs that could punch a hole through a chest. His Abel has a masterly way of shouting down conversations without raising his voice.

What makes Abel so interesting is that he has achieved everything the black cause wanted – the parity that affords a big house on a middle-class street and the security to be insecure about crime. So what motivates him?

Clearly, this film is never going to attempt a Do The Right Thing, Spike Lee's incendiary treatment of race hatred. But there are times here when you think LaBute is going to steer it out of the genre straitjacket. He has a go, and then he opts out. What a pity. The last act gets explosive: guns are pulled and an LA forest fire threatens to engulf the streets. Which is all very melodramatic and predictable, but it punctures the film's carefully wrought tension. Still, there's much to savour. Jackson's animal charisma and LaBute's subversive misanthropy are a reminder that genre movies can play it smart too. You don't always have to be original – it is what you do with your unoriginality that counts.

Lakeview Terrace

(Neil LaBute): Samuel L Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington, Ron Glass.

Running time: 106 minutes. (15A)

Rating: 3/5