Tag: Sexual Thriller

Perhaps the hardest part about this job is finding time to get to everything you want to get to, without neglecting other work, family, loved ones, hobbies, etc. An even harder part of this job is getting to the things you also don’t care to get to, because your website made a creed a long time ago and you want to stick to it.

Watching Shitty Movies, So You Don’t Have To.

That means catching up on those January/February releases sometimes really late in the year because in actual January you are watching all the indie/bizarre Oscar nominated films, while also starting on 2018’s new works. It means more articles about the best and the worst.

So yeah, the review for Unforgettable is late, but it is clearly a bad film from a quick glance. If you are going to make a film called Unforgettable, you can’t also make it shitty. That just leads to the easiest jokes ever. For shame.

Look at that bitch. Tucking her kid into bed. What a skank.

Julia Banks (Rosario Dawson) is fucked. She is being interrogated by the police, because her ex (Simon Kassianides) was found dead in her home. She used to have a restraining order on him, but as soon as it expired after two years, she started to send him messages, enticing him to visit, including some sexy pictures and actual lingerie. But is that what really happened?

Flash back to a few months, where Julia is leaving her job, to move away to her fiance´s place. David (Geoff Stults) is living a good life and they are going to get married very soon, so why not move together? He has a daughter, Lily (Isabella Kai Rice) who is relatively young, in dance and other things. Oh, and of course he was once married as well, to Tessa (Katherine Heigl) a seemingly perfect human being who is organized, confident, and loving.

Shit, Tessa has everything down great. Including Lily´s best interests. Tessa doesn´t like that she now only gets weekends with her own daughter, especially if she is losing her to Julia, a new woman, a woman who doesn´t get Lily like she does.

So Tessa really only has one option available to her. Ruin the marriage, ruin Julia, and she can have her husband and daughter back. It makes sense, really.

Also starring Alex Quijano, Sarah Burns, and Cheryl Ladd.

At least we can assume the picture frame is there for a reason.

Has there ever been a sexual thriller that is also a good film? I mean, good from a standpoint that is not a 11 year old male discovering his own genitalia? I say if you are going to make a sexual thriller, at least go hard on those keywords there. These one or two a year films are being bogged down by famous celebrities who may be sexy or thrilling, but are tamed by the normally PG-13 movie rating given to them.

But wait! This one is rated R. Yeah, but for no reason. You get a butt and side boob in one awkwardly long getting ready for a bath scene, while people are being creepy. And most of the rest of it is just really, really, poor thriller. There is no mystery, outside of the opening scene. We are told what is going to happen thanks to starting it before the film takes place in a police department. And they show us Heigl’s character starts to do the bad things.

Literally no actual level of suspense. I guess the only surprise is what happens after the police department, but it goes as you’d expect. These really don’t end differently. They glorify taking matters into your own hands, extreme violence, and saying fuck the police.

The acting is poor, the plot line is really dumb, and I in no way feel sexually thrilled.

I didn’t get a huge helping of sexual thrillers in 2016 like I had in previous years. It was a genre that was just severely lacking.

And of course, I missed it when When The Bough Breaks came out in theaters. One of the few films to really fit the bill. But I made sure to grab it right away when it came out to DVD. You know, just in case it is a giant pile of trash like a lot of similar genre’d films end up being. Remember The Boy Next Door? Addicted? I feel like both of them made previous worst of the year lists.

So sure, I went in expecting the worst, but I have been surprised before.

Ah what a happy pseudo-family, pre bough breaking.

John (Morris Chestnut) and Laura Taylor (Regina Hall) are two very successful married people. They both have fantastic jobs, they make bank, have a nice hall, come from nice backgrounds. But they cannot have a baby together, for whatever reason. After multiple miscarriages, the two have spent years looking for a good surrogate who they trusted with their baby.

And they think they have finally found someone with Anna Walsh (Jaz Sinclair). She is a young and sweet girl, wanting to help others. She will also use the money to help get a good house for her and her boyfriend, Mike Mitchell (Theo Rossi). He is deploying soon, and with the her sudden extra income and his, they should be able to have their dream home.

Well, the surrogate is a success and she is pregnant. But it turns out that Mike is abusive, so they decide to protect Anna and let her live in the house with them. But Anna begins acting peculiar. Spying on John and refusing to be modest with her body. And she is still seeing her boyfriend on the side. He wants her to threaten to back down and keep the baby, they will pay her more money to give it up and they can get rich.

Also they lied about their names and their past. She is also becoming obsessed with John, to the point where she tries to tear their marriage apart and his life if she will not be with her.

Ah, yes, the old unborn baby hostage deal for that sweet Chestnut loving.

Also featuring Michael K. Williams, Romany Malco, Glenn Morshower, and Tom Nowicki.

“Oh sorry, I seem to have fallen on the floor and can’t get up or cover up.”

When The Bough Breaks wants to take a perfectly normal and already scary situation for a couple and go to the extreme with it. I won’t say there is anything morally wrong trying to scare people away from using surrogates, because technically there isn’t, but it is still a pretty damn dark and grey area.

As this isn’t just a drama type film, but a SUPER drama, the actors mostly end up having to over act instead of letting a potentially great thriller play out. The plan for the girl and her boyfriend was pretty dumb. Her way of slowly seducing Chestnut was pretty dumb. Hall’s character was completely absent and terrible in this film as well. Just a lot of badly working together gears not making a lot of progress.

And the ending where all the potential scares occur? Yeah, I was scared once when a character drops the baby safely strapped in its car seat, but none of the other tension was felt. It was instead all laughable, including its finish.

There won’t be any surprises in this film. Heck, there isn’t even nakedness to make a real sexual thriller. Just a laughable thriller, with a terrible idea for a plot, acted by people who normally do a bit better.