Adulterers (2016)

February 18, 2018February 18, 2018 / swampflix / 12 Comments

For a time before I moved to Austin three years ago, I flirted with the idea of moving to L.A. and working as a script reader, as a dear friend had for a few years. She gave me a few different scripts to work on doing standard format reader reviews for, and while some of them were quite good (Melisa Wallack’s Manuscript, which ended up on The Black List, was my favorite of these), there were also quite a few that weren’t very good at all. The one that sticks in my mind the most was one entitled Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch, which has an IMDb page that lists it as “in development,” but doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2009 or 2010. I read enough short stories and personal essays in creative writing classes and discussion groups in both my undergrad and grad school that I developed a kind of sixth sense for when something was what could charitably called “revenge writing.” It’s basically when someone (invariably a man, almost always straight) writes out his one-sided feelings about the dissolution of a relationship, recently or distantly, painting himself as the put-upon everyman whose life is disrupted by the she-demon who broke his heart. That Guy in Your MFA didn’t emerge from a vacuum, is what I’m saying, and there’s a universality to the personality that those tweets are mocking which speaks volumes about society, literature culture, the writing world, and college campuses. Even without the laughable “Based on a True Story” caption that opens the film, or the credit that shows that the film was written, directed, and produced by one person (me, out loud, when I saw that on screen: “Oh boy”), I can smell that same malodorous desperation and entitlement all over Adulterers, and boy is it not in service of the film as a whole.

Spoilers to follow for a film you should just skip.

Samuel (Sean Faris) is an assistant manager at a hardware store in New Orleans, preparing to celebrate his one year anniversary with his wife Ashley (Danielle Savre), at the pinnacle of a record-breaking heat wave. He tells her that he won’t be able to come home as early as expected, as he’s picking up a double shift to help pay for the house and his new truck, but in fact intends to go home early and surprise her. After fending off the flirtations of his co-worker Lola (Stephanie Charles), he picks up a box “of dem dark chocklits” along with a bouquet of flowers and makes his way home to the exterior of what appears to be a shotgun house but has the interior of a two-story. While waiting for his wife to arrive from her waitressing shift, he realizes that her purse is sitting on the table, and that there are the telltale grunts of some mischief going on upstairs; he finds his wife in flagrante delicto with another man (Mehcad Brooks). Distraught, he goes downstairs to grab a couple of handguns, then goes back up and shoots them both guns akimbo. Credits!

Or not; in fact, it appears he just imagined this. He again climbs the stairs, and this time confronts Ashley and her lover at gunpoint, forcing them to answer questions about how long they’ve been seeing each other, how they met, and the frequency and content of their sexual encounters (yes: they have done it in the butt). This continues for some time, as all parties are emotionally and physically degraded. Brooks’s character’s name is given as Damien, and he admits that he, too, is married, and that his wife Jasmine (Steffinnie Phrommany) is pregnant with their second child. This is not the first time he’s cheated on her, nor is Ashley, whom he only knows as “Peaches,” the only woman with whom he is committing adultery.

We also learn that Ashley was already married when she met Samuel, but he rescued her from her abusive husband and even adopted her young daughter (whom we never see). Ashley gives a monologue about how she can’t help herself because she’s “broken,” and tells about how this brokenness emerged from being sexually assaulted several times by her father’s employer. Meanwhile, Lola continues reaching out to try and get Samuel to return to work before he loses his job, and when Jasmine calls, Samuel tells her about her husband’s infidelity, she decides to take her own revenge by coming to the house and having sex with Samuel in front of Damien, then telling Sam to dispose of the other man as he sees fit. This descends further into much absurd nonsense, with a lot of “Do you read the Bible?” and “I am God’s judgment” and “I won’t pretend to be a Christian, but my mama took me to church every Sunday” dialogue that I’m sure means you can imagine every moment of this excruciating standoff. Ultimately, it’s left up to God (in the form of Russian Roulette) to decide Damien and Ashley’s fate, and the afternoon’s events come to a conclusion with Ashley smoking a long-deserved cigarette while watching Sam bury her lover.

Except psych! Because of course it is. Samuel really did kill both Ashley and her lover at the beginning of the film, and the entire rest of the film has been his imagining of what would have happened had he not done so. Interestingly, this twist appears to have been so confusing (it really isn’t, though) that even the person who edited the film’s Wikipedia page doesn’t seem to have understood what happened, as it states (as of 02/16/18) that “Sam later finds himself back in reality, just after burying Ashley beneath the rose bed in the back yard. He realizes that he killed his wife and made up a story of her cheating in his mind.” That’s pretty clearly not what happened, as he clearly shoots them both, but you can hardly blame anyone for giving up and just making up their own ending. Unsurprisingly, this kind of “the whole thing was imagined!” plot twist was also common in a lot of the bad scripts I read, not to mention the work of fellow students. In the latter that’s almost forgivable, but in the former it’s a telltale sign that you’re an amateur. That doesn’t matter, I suppose, when you’re the writer, director, and producer, but if you’re thinking of submitting something like this to a legitimate agency or production house, take a tip from your old friend Boomer and just don’t.

There’s so much else going on here that demands to be discussed. I was actually able to track down an interview with director (writer, and producer) H.M. Coakley with the Urban Movie Channel, and it is one of the fluffiest fluff pieces I’ve ever read, and that’s coming from someone who used to do just these kinds of interviews with small name, big ego local personalities when writing for Dig in Baton Rouge. In it, when asked about the origin of the story, Coakley states “The actual idea for Adulterers was based on something that happened to a family member. I remember saying to myself, ‘Wow— what would I have done, if that was me?’” That’s not really what “based on a true story” means, I’m afraid. Just because a friend or family member caught their significant other in the act with someone else, and you imagined what you would do, and what you imagined is a character imagining an interaction with their cheating wife and her lover, that doesn’t make it “based” on anything. That barely makes it “inspired” by something that happened; by that logic, Home Alone is “based on a true story” about that time you imagined what it would be like to be a kid left alone in a mansion at Christmas, and Starship Troopers is “based on a true story” of fascist propaganda.

The worst thing about the interview, however, is this statement from the interviewer: “The story location was steamy & hot New Orleans, Louisiana and the accents, especially Sean’s, seemed quite authentic.” It’s not. It’s really, really, really not. The only authentic thing about this movie is the fact that, if someone were going to cheat on sex-on-a-stick uberbabe Sean Faris (who, in case you didn’t know, looks like this), the only other human being on earth who could possibly make your eye wander would be megahunk Mehcad Brooks (who looks like this). To be honest, either one of them would be worth getting shot. Cinematographer Ben Kufrin‘s pre-2005 C.V. consists almost entirely of titles with the word “Playboy” thrown in there, and while I’m hesitant to say that he shoots these male bodies as lovingly as (presumably) he did the women in his earlier films, this “erotic” “thriller” may at least send you off with visions of chiseled abs dancing in your head. The interview mentions that Brooks expressed interest as early as 2010, which makes sense given that this was after he stopped getting regular paychecks for The Game and True Blood and before he started being able to get paid regularly for Supergirl, where he’s been unfortunately underutilized of late. Full disclosure: Sean Faris’s presence was the only reason I watched this movie, and I’ve long felt that his turn on Life As We Know It should have led to greater market penetration and made him more of a star, but he’s never had the mainstream success that his sister has.

The long and short of it is this: even if you’re trying to find a film that’s set in a hot place to try and make up for the cold, cold winter we’ve had this year, you’re better off watching a documentary about volcanoes. If you just want the visual feast of watching hot people sweating in a stuffy room, there are other, better places to get your jollies.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond

The Handmaiden (2016)

October 24, 2016October 24, 2016 / swampflix / 9 Comments

EPSON MFP image

I’m typically not a huge fan of twisty shenanigans in my movie plots, but director Park Chan-wook’s latest is a testament to the virtues of The Major Plot Twist as a storytelling device. The Handmaiden is a deliberately twisty crime story in which the audience is continually conned into believing half-truths depending on the minute-to-minute revelations of its various narrators, anxiously awaiting the next rug pull to knock us on our ass. As a lesbian erotic thriller with meticulous dedication to craft & a Tarantino-esque celebration of crime & revenge narratives, the film plays like an unholy combination of the flashier aspects of Bound & The Duke of Burgundy, if you could believe such a thing was possible. It’s a gleefully tawdry art piece that takes great delight in its own narrative cleverness, but also constructs a strong enough visual foundation for its flashy storytelling style to shine instead of annoy. If The Handmaiden were a little uglier or if its bigger reveals were held until its final moments, its tonal balancing act might have crumbled disastrously. As is, it’s too fun & too beautiful to resist.

A petty criminal brings in an even pettier cohort for a conspiracy plot to gaslight a young heiress & rob her of her dowry once she’s declared insane. The young, naïve forger finds it increasingly difficult to live a lie as the heiress’s dutiful handmaiden as she finds herself falling unexpectedly in love with her would-be victim. The love is quickly revealed to be mutual and the film deals in largely the same unspoken, but physically expressed homosexual desire as Carol . . . until it culminates in an explicit, laugh-heavy sex scene (or three). Once their mutual desire is solidified & consummated the question is how much further the handmaiden is willing to deceive & exploit her lady. That is, until Park starts to have fun in deceiving & exploiting his own audience. There’s a near-endless sea of complex relationships, past abuses, planned double-crossings, and unthinkable depths of greed that Park plays close to the chest until he can use them to prank & subvert audience expectation. It isn’t a storytelling style I usually care for, considering how much attention it calls to its own cleverness, but The Handmaiden is so lovingly constructed & visually detailed that my personal apprehension with its tone means nothing. It also helps that the film often plays like a comedy, one where the humor lands consistently & sometimes even tenderly.

The Handmaiden is above all else a film about forgery. Its characters forge expensive books & jewelry, along with entire identities. The central conman forges a life where he can pose as nobility despite his empty bank account & lowly beginnings. The lady’s uncle/Master forges himself a new national identity, forsaking his Korean heritage for a false air of Japanese superiority, complete with a vast collection of his adopted country’s erotica & a particular obsession with the infamous octopus sex print The Tale of the Fisherman’s Wife. Most importantly, though, the film tackles the idea of forged desire. It pits the real-life sexual attraction between the lady & her handmaiden against the forgeries of the predatory masculine seduction forced by the conman & the hideously cruel uncle, making almost a divine object out of the genuine thing. In his own way, Park himself also deals in a kind of forgery – intentionally selling the audience a fake version of his own story before slowly revealing the genuine version of the real thing. He was smart to marry that storytelling deceit with the consistent theme of deceit in the film’s content; it works both as an acknowledgement & as a mission statement.

A lot of the fun of The Handmaiden is in trying to get a firm hand on the film’s tone. Depending on what moment you’re watching, it can play as a myriad of different genres: a farce, a revenge thriller, a ghost story, intense erotica, literal gallows humor, etc. Park Chan-wook is playful & adventurous in the way he navigates these moods, but he anchors the film to a solid foundation of highly specific, meticulously crafted imagery. A cherry blossom tree, an octopus, a coiled rope, an ink-stained tongue; The Handmaiden is first & foremost an achievement in intense costume & sent design, which allows for plenty of room in its narrative sprawl for twist-heavy shenanigans. I don’t think it’s quite the exquisite art piece of the similarly twisty & playfully erotic The Duke of Burgundy, but the film also gives no implication that it’s aiming for that work’s quiet emotional impact. It mostly aims to have fun with its narrative & its audience and by that measurement it’s a major success.

-Brandon Ledet

Scott Valentine’s Other Over-Sexed Demon Feature: To Sleep with a Vampire (1993)

April 26, 2016April 27, 2016 / swampflix / Leave a comment

EPSON MFP image

As Boomer mentioned in our Swampchat discussion of April’s Movie of the Month, the romantic horror comedy My Demon Lover, the film’s star Scott Valentine had struck it somewhat big as a bad boy heartthrob on the televised sitcom Family Ties, but mostly failed to convert that success into a long term film career. It wasn’t for lack of trying, though. Valentine had a long string of starring roles in minor titles throughout the 80s & 90s, but his turn as the titular monster in My Demon Lover would mark the high point of a career that never truly took off. Topping out with My Demon Lover might help explain why the actor later returned to the antiheroic position of romantic love interest/supernatural threat in the straight-to-VHS oddity To Sleep with a Vampire six (six six) years later. To Sleep with a Vampire & My Demon Lover are two vastly different films working in two entirely separate genres (the erotic thriller & the romantic comedy, respectively), but Scott Valentine’s starring roles as the dangerous, titular love interest in both works serve as a clear connecting piece between them.

Some of the genre markers of To Sleep with a Vampire are seemingly at war with themselves. The film opens with Scott Valentine stalking back alley as if he were the brooding antihero in a self-serious neo-noir, immediately announcing himself as a vampiric threat. Once the film shifts gears, Valentine does his brooding in a cheap strip club, revealing the film’s true nature as a sleazy erotic thriller. To Sleep with a Vampire commits a little too earnestly when it reaches the strip club, indulging in so many passionless strip teases that it started to feel like a strange, vampiric modernization of the Ed Wood-penned “classic” Orgy of the Dead. Thankfully,the film eventually moves on and blossoms as being . . . actually pretty great? Valentine’s vampiric sex demon materializes at a sleazy strip club not only to oggle, but to search for a potential victim, one he finds in a down-on-her-luck stripper who is hopelessly suicidal due to an estranged relationship with her young son. The stripper, who’s essentially hit rock bottom on this particular night (and, thus, more attractive to her vampire predator, since killing someone suicidal is justifiably more ethical), is convinced to follow the bloodthirsty beau back to his bachelor pad (lair?) to discuss the delicacies of mortality until he plans to feast on her blood just before sunrise. Eventually, they bone.

A straight-to-VHS triviality produced by Roger “The Best There Ever Was” Corman, To Sleep with a Vampire is far more entertaining than it has any right to be. At times threatening to devolve into a deeply misogynistic masturbation fantasy for immature man-children, the film gradually reveals itself to be something much more poignant. Its all-in-one-night plot structure eventually morphs the film into something of a glorified stage play (from way, way, way, way off Broadway) akin to Steve Guttenberg’s passion project PS Your Cat is Dead. It’s far from the vampiric romance of titles like The Hunger, Near Dark, Only Lovers Left Alive, Innocent Blood, or A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night in terms of quality, but there’s still an interesting back & forth in the film’s understanding of gender politics through a vampiric lens & Scott Valentine’s monstrous heartthrob really does have great chemistry with his sex worker victim (Charlie Spalding) despite the predatory aspect that relationship dynamic implies. This is an atmospheric work where the gloomy, horny atmosphere is often undercut by an overbearing sense of camp, but it’s a compromised formula that works surprisingly well. In particular, the objectively bad acting of the two leads makes their overwrought characters seem all the more “human”. In a more tongue-in-cheek work, the exchange “Tell me about the daylight. How does the sun feel on your skin?” “How the hell should I know? I work nights,” might’ve been worthy a hearty eye roll, but the deadpan performances sell it wholeheartedly here.

That’s not to say that To Sleep with a Vampire is anything more than a campy trifle. There’s plenty to scoff at here: the black & white vampire cam, the titular antihero’s oversensitive concern with vampire stereotypes, weird exchanges where the mismatched protagonists become physically a combatitve & then immediately make out, an inevitable love-making scene that nearly outdoes The Room in sheer audacious cheese, etc. However, the movie still has a surprising emotional weight to it, especially in its exploration of the vulnerability in following a complete stranger home for casual sex. Scott Valentine also shows a surprising amount of range here. His two portrayals of sex-obsessed demons could not be more different. In My Demon Lover he’s pure cartoonish id, not unlike a murderous version of Rik Mayall’s performance in Drop Dead Fred. In To Sleep with a Vampire he goes full Batman in his performance (this was the Tim Burton era of the character’s popularity spike, mind you): gruff, brooding, misunderstood, conflicted. Again, it’s difficult to discern which is the better film out of To Sleep with a Vampire & My Demon Lover because they are so artistically disparate (and so politically regressive in their own unique ways), but both are transgressively entertaining in an odd way & both do their best to showcase Scott Valentine’s talents as a dangerous bad boy sex symbol. My Demon Lover is more readily recommendable to potential Scott Valentine fetishists in its (minor) cultural significance & its commitment to let the actor run wild, but To Sleep with a Vampire features the 80s semi-icon wearing only a pair of leopard print bikini briefs on a moonlit beach, so who’s to say which is more essential in that regard? Either way they compliment each other nicely & they’re both worth a watch for the shlock-inclined.

For more on April’s Movie of the Month, the 1987 romantic horror comedy My Demon Lover, check out our Swampchat discussion of the film, this look on how it reflects the work of director Ate de Jong, and last week’s unlikely, uncomfortable look at how it compares with Harold Ramis’s 2000 remake of Bedazzled.

-Brandon Ledet

The Perfect Guy (2015)

September 21, 2015September 21, 2015 / swampflix / 1 Comment

EPSON MFP image

I’ve mentioned a couple times recently that there seems to be a trending return to the erotic thriller format of the 1990s, this year alone represented at the very least in the films The Boy Next Door, Fifty Shades of Grey, and My Mistress. The latest contribution to this genre throwback is The Perfect Guy, which is somewhat similar to the JLo vehicle The Boy Next Door in that it genderswaps its stalker & villain roles. Traditionally played by dudes like Michael Douglas in oldschool erotic thrillers like Fatal Attraction & Basic Instinct, the victim is much more disconcertingly vulnerable when cast female. When the protagonist Leah (Sanaa Lathan) complains to friends & police officers that she is being stalked & harassed by an ex-boyfriend, they make it seem as if she is overreacting, playing a game of “blame the victim” that is all too real in the context of how we typically treat domestic abuse. This female victim/male perpetrator dynamic of The Boy Next Door & The Perfect Guy bring the erotic thriller genre into some distinct 80s slasher territory, one that’s met with some inevitable, but satisfying revenge plot machinations in the third act. It’s a genuinely fun formula, given that you enjoy watching well-funded versions of the kind of dreck that used to play on late night Cinemax. I know I do, anyway.

What most distinguishes The Perfect Guy from its fellow erotic thriller throwbacks is the over-the-top aspects of the villainous Carter, played for optimum cheese by Michael Ealy. Although Ealy’s stalker/killer is not as well-defined in his motivations as, say, Mark Lewis in Peeping Tom, he is a remarkable collection of disquieting quirks that make the picture way more fun than it has any right to be. Early in the film Carter is portrayed as, well, the perfect guy, a viable alternative to Leah’s go-nowhere relationship with a more reserved boyfriend with commitment issues (Morris Chestnut). Carter is literally to good to be true. After an ice latte meet cute, he fights off unwanted lechers who hit on Leah at bars, refers to motherhood as “the most important job on the planet”, charms her parents more than any other man she’s ever taken home, and generally makes the facial expressions of a mischievous kitten. He also has a little bit of a bad-boy edge, taking Leah to secret backalley clubs & introducing her to the joys of fucking in public. When Leah jokes, “This is the part of the movie where you kidnap me & sell my organs.” she has no idea just how sour things will eventually turn. About a half hour into the film, Carter snaps in a pure fit of jealousy & viciously beats a stranger for merely talking to his girl. The maudlin romance music suddenly gives way to hair-raising violins & things really start to get fun.

Carter is a total weirdo. Once Leah breaks it off with him, he sneaks into her house to sensually kiss the lipstick smears she left on her dirty wine glasses, huff the smells from her bedroom pillows, stare at her from behind closed closet doors, and longingly suck on her used toothbrush. Of course, he also uses his professional background in “corporate espionage & IT protection” to install spyware on her computer & set up hidden cameras in her bedroom. When he’s not following Leah around or sneaking into her home, he’s brooding in the cold blues of his internet dungeon, watching from a remote location. As if this weren’t enough of a creepy violation of privacy, he even goes as far as to silently hide under Leah’s bed as she’s boinking her old beau. The sole police officer who works to protect Leah from this dangerous freak amusingly observes, “He’s a robot,” but I feel like the movie had something else in mind completely. Brief shots & mentions of wild coyotes roaming Leah’s neighborhood poses her stalker’s behavior as oddly animalistic. As Carter transitions into full serial killer mode in the film’s second hour, often appearing in the misty ambiance of a full moon to close in on his kills, I kept thinking to myself “I wish, wish, wish that it were revealed that he was a werewolf this whole time.” It would’ve made a lot more sense than you’d think & it would’ve exulted the film from moderately fun to one for the ages.

Alas, there are no werewolf transformations in The Perfect Guy & the film follows a fairly strict genre trajectory of slowly escalating revenge that eventually results in a Final Showdown, Leah finally taking control of a situation that makes her unusually vulnerable for a normally self-sufficient woman. The story is undeniably told from Leah’s female perspective, its erotic aspects leering far more on her two admirers’ sweaty back muscles than it ever does on her own body (although, curiously, there is no onscreen man-butt). In fact, I think it’s fairly safe to say that the film would fail the gender-reversed version of The Bechdel Test. The only times men are depicted alone in conversation, they’re discussing Leah & their relationships with her. It’s only right, then, that Leah gets her revenge arc, refusing to accept Carter’s “If I can’t have you, no one will” proposition/threat. Watching her smash up his internet dungeon, compromise his employment, beating him mercilessly with kitchenware, and otherwise besting him at his own game is certainly satisfying in the context of the erotic thriller genre. I just can’t shake the feeling that a werewolf transformation would’ve escalated the entertainment factor a thousandfold, especially considering how much of Carter’s presence was so far outside the realm of typical human behavior. Maybe the werewolf angle is something Michael Ealy can actively search out in a future project, making good use of those creepily pretty eyes & Skeletor cheekbones. As is, the werewolfless The Perfect Guy is a perfectly satisfying, breezily watchable erotic thriller, one content to skip long periods of time (including entire months, funerals) to speed up its ludicrous harassment & violence. Anyone who had fun watching The Boy Next Door earlier this year is likely to find equal (if not bested) pleasure here, especially in Michael Ealy’s eccentric performance.

-Brandon Ledet

Dream Lover (1994)

March 14, 2015 / swampflix / Leave a comment

Thrillers and James Spader are two of my favorite things, but they do not come together harmoniously in Dream Lover. The film’s director, Nicholas Kazan, seemed to be more interested in making this a chic, sexy movie instead of a genuine psychological thriller and that was a bad move on his part. Many thrillers, especially those in the early 90s, have sexual elements that enhance their appeal, but something went terribly wrong with this one. Dream Lover isn’t a well-balanced film, but it was sort of enjoyable because it was so crappy (hence the Camp Stamp).

Ray Reardon (James Spader) is a successful businessman that becomes instantly attracted to Lena Mathers (Mädchen Amick), a beautiful woman he meets at an art gallery. They partake in a passionate love affair and after sleeping together a few times decide to tie the knot. Of course, after marrying Lena and not knowing much about her past, Ray finds himself in a marriage filled with mystery and deception. He has recurring clown nightmares that reflect his crumbling love life and I absolutely hated them. They didn’t blend in with the rest of the film and are insanely annoying. It quickly becomes obvious that Lena is psychotic and after Ray’s money, but her plan to get her hands on his money doesn’t surface until the end of the movie. Thankfully, Kazan allows the audience to have a little bit of fun attempting to figure out Lena’s diabolical plan.

Uncovering the mystery of Lena’s scheme was a bit fun, but the film was ultimately a very unsatisfying, predictable thriller. There weren’t many surprises or unexpected twists, which are some basic components to a decent thriller. Spader was the best thing about the film because his acting was flawless (as always), but it wasn’t enough to save the film from falling into the depths of bad movie Hell.

Dream Lover is currently streaming on Netflix.

-Britnee Lombas

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

February 23, 2015 / swampflix / 6 Comments

The best-selling erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey recently made its long-awaited debut on the silver screen and, as a fan of the book series, I was very curious to see how this film could possibly be tame enough for movie theaters. What could have been one of the most iconic movies of the year turned out to be a total snoozefest. Literally. People in my theater were sleeping so hard they were snoring.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a film about a man incapable of love that falls for a hopeless romantic. What makes this average love story different from others is that he also likes to dominate his female partners in his “Red Room of Pain.” Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) is a successful, attractive businessman that really enjoys the color grey. He has a grey office, grey ties, grey cars, etc. Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is a shy college student that earns the opportunity to interview the hottest billionaire in Seattle, Mr. Grey. After administering a truly crappy interview, she finds herself to be attracted to Christian, just as he finds himself to be infatuated with Ana. He instantly becomes disgustingly obsessed with her and takes time out of his busy schedule to make sure he knows her every move. There’s a mysterious aura about Christian, but Ana just can’t seem to figure out his big secret, even after he shows up at her hardware store job to buy cable ties, rope, and masking tape. Shortly after that uncomfortable encounter, he tells her “I don’t make love. I fuck. Hard.” Everything sort of went downhill after that.

I don’t understand how a film about a BDSM relationship could be so quiet and lackluster. There wasn’t very much dialogue between Ana and Christian, and that really didn’t do much to make their love for each other believable. There was so much awkward energy between the two that it just became too much to handle. In the book, which is told in first person by Ana, many of her internal emotions are discussed, but this isn’t really shown in the film. The film made it look like she really didn’t enjoy being dominated, and at some points, it seemed like she was being sexually abused. It’s been a while since I’ve read the novel, but from what I remember, she was actually enjoying the submissive lifestyle; she was just scared that she liked it too much. Something went terribly wrong when the information from the book was translated into a film script.

In all honesty, I didn’t expect much from this film. The book was pure smut, so I was prepared for a silly mess of a movie that it wasn’t. With lots of good one-liners, a wicked soundtrack, and an amazing slow-motion flogging scene, it was far from the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Actually, I’m kind of looking forward to the sequels.

-Britnee Lombas

The Boy Next Door (2015)

February 10, 2015February 10, 2015 / swampflix / 6 Comments

“I really love your mother’s cookies.”

Jennifer Lopez’s new erotic thriller The Boy Next Door is the kind of movie you’d expect to find on Cinemax at two in the morning in the mid-90s. It is badly written, poorly acted, and campy to its core, but it’s also a lot of fun.

To quell expectations, the film starts with one of the lamest, most unnecessary montages ever. High school English teacher Claire is shown jogging through the park as melodramatic flashbacks of her crumbling marriage and the effect it had on her son Kevin are interspersed at random. Why the filmmakers chose to have a flashback in the first thirty seconds of the film when a few lines of dialogue could have done the same thing is beyond me, but it does establish the film’s “bad Lifetime Movie on steroids” vibe.

This sentiment continues when we are introduced to Claire’s seducer and new neighbor Noah, whose chiseled biceps appear on screen before his face. Handsome and charming, Noah quickly manipulates his way into the family’s inner circle by developing a bizarre, slightly homoerotic friendship with Claire’s asthmatic son Kevin. The two are supposed to be high school age but Noah looks closer to 30. Noah then moves on to seducing Claire by doing hunky things like fixing garage doors and working on cars in a sleeveless shirt. He even reveals his sensitive side (“Ah, poets. Homer, Shakespeare, Byron, Zeppelin, Dylan.”) and proceeds to win Claire over by buying her a first edition copy of The Iliad at a garage sale (huh).

One night, after a really bad date and a few too many glasses of wine, Claire gives in to temptation and lets Noah seduce her. That’s when the real fun begins. After Claire rejects Noah’s further advances, his transformation from hunk to psychopath happens almost instantaneously. What starts with double entendres like “I really love your mother’s cookies” & “It got real wet over here” quickly escalates to full-blown murder. Along the way we are treated to typical movie-psycho behavior: stalking, hacking email accounts, cutting people’s brakes, etc. This all leads to an absurd third act involving arson & eyeballs that approaches the high camp that could have made the film a true cult classic if there were only more of it.

Jennifer Lopez does the best she can with what she’s given but she alone can’t save the movie from coming across like a really crappy rehash of Fatal Attraction. There are lots of unintentionally funny moments, but the film doesn’t truly embrace its own badness until the last twenty minutes. The Boy Next Door isn’t going to be on any critic’s top ten list this year, but for fans of camp it is a trashy, highly entertaining mess.

-James Cohn