MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: A Student's Obsession (aka Dangerous Lessons) (2015)

Director: Jacobo Rispa, Damian Romay
Writer(s): Romay, and Blaine Chiapetta
Starring: Louise Lombard, Alex Esola, Ella Wahlestedt, and JoMarie Payton

Here we go again with one of MarVista’s favorite subjects: Obsession. They seem to dwell on it a lot, essentially using it as a “paint by numbers” style template for their movies: Just change the names, sexes, ages, and professions of the characters, and voila! Instant obsession movie!

This one, though, gives us not one, but two obsessions! Think of it as a BOGO deal that no one ever asked for. Stephanie is a married, middle-aged high school teacher who instantly becomes the focus of new student James. On a field trip to the Florida Keys (what kind of budget does this school have?!) Stephanie gets caught up in a moment of weakness and kisses him, something which she instantly regrets, despite the cold detachment of her worthless workaholic husband back home.

Despite her best intentions (and suggestion from her best friend, played by JoMarie Payton from Family Matters!) to sweep it under the rug and move on, James seems to take the kiss as an open invitation to go all psycho on her, stalking her and stopping at nothing to make him the object of her affection. Muddying the waters further is the creepy, disgusting old science teacher Richard, who also desperately wants her to be his, making one cringeworthy and ill-advised show of affection after another. Because, you know, he's old, and therefore a creep.

And that’s where the movie attempts to offer some intrigue and suspense as the two storylines bleed into one another. Who’s the one that sent her poisonous flowers? Which one of them are taking pictures of her through her window at home? And what’s the identity of the young boy her teenaged daughter has taken a liking to? Or most importantly, how come their expensive house doesn’t have a damn driveway? (Seriously, they park their cars in the grass on the front lawn).

As it all gets sorted out, of course we learn that the good-looking child has mommy troubles, and lives in a trailer outside of an abandoned home, and that the man who the daughter has fallen for (and who the mother invites to dinner) turns out to be James, who’s just using her to get to her mother. But the daughter not only can't decipher that, but also can't decipher her own mother's intense discomfort upon seeing James, lashing out in naive fury when Stephanie throws him out of the house and tells him never to come back again, and chalking it up as just a case of overprotective mom syndrome. Uh, no sweetheart, it's for her safety just as much as yours, something you'll learn the hard way later on.

Unfortunately, Stephanie—who’s completely comfortable with having a talk with her daughter when she says she’s ready to lose her virginity—apparently doesn’t feel the same way about talking to her daughter about vicious psychos: Rather than spell everything out for her daughter, and admit that he’s the one stalking her, she skirts around the issue, making vague comments about how he’s not who he says he is, which sound like broad, generalized accusations that only fuel the daughter's hatred even more. And of course, the daughter doesn’t believe her mom until she’s loosely tied up (there must not have been enough money in the budget for actual rope) and held at weaponpoint by James, who, as it is clear by this point, is a psychopath.

You can always count on the obligatory “twist” ending, usually involving a cliffhanger hint that the killer isn't actually dead, but in the one example of a cliche the writers must have missed, we don't get that here. While I was initially happy to see that, I have to say that, now that I've experienced it, I can say with 100% certainty that a “happy” MarVista ending is somehow even worse than the predictable cliffhanger, as this one proves, by featuring a forced scene where the entire family –who were all on the brink of disaster just a few short months ago—all share a wonderful meal full of laughter and smiles together, as if it serves as proof that all of the traumatic wounds have fully healed. Sorry, but I just don't buy that Stephanie's husband can't not be a tool, so this scene rings hollow for me. Although, to be fair, so did everything else.

This has some entertaining moments of unintentional hilarity—most of which involve poor Richard's embarrassing attempts to woo Stephanie--but despite the “double obsession!” shakeup, it still manages to be below average on the whole.

RATING: 4/10

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MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: Trapped Model (aka A Model Kidnapping) (2019)

Director: Damian Romay

Writer(s): Andrea Canning

Starring: Lucy Loken, Wes McGee, Katherine Diaz, and Jessica Galinas

Lucy Loken—perhaps Marvista’s most visually appealing actress—is back again! We last saw her in My Teacher, My Obsession (aka Dad Crush) where, as you may remember, she played the titular character who was obsessed with her teacher, and would stop at nothing to make him hers, with deadly consequences. Or you may just be getting it confused with one of the hundreds of other similarly-plotted movies that Lifetime seems to release every minute. It happens to the best of us.

Anyway, she was attractive as the bad girl in that one, but now she gains some experience playing a completely different role: a dumb, naive victim. Here, Ms. Loken plays Grace, a naïve teenaged girl who seems to be obsessed with the idea of becoming a model, even though she seems completely bored and unmotivated in the one photo shoot we see that opens the movie.

She’s so enamored with the idea that she can’t even commit to her boyfriend, who tells her he loves her, only to get coldly declined. Also declined is her mother, who wants her to go to college to make something of herself, rather than spend all day answering shady modeling ads on shady modeling websites. (Can you believe most of them want her to get naked, despite never mentioning that in the text?!) Then one day, she finds another opportunity that she can’t pass up: an all-expense paid gig! Paid room and board, paid travel…if she gets this one, then she’s hit the jackpot! (“This sounds too good to be true,” she explains out loud before eagerly submitting her resume.)

Mere minutes later, she gets a text saying she’s been the one chosen for the modeling gig. This doesn’t raise any red flags? She clearly was already apprehensive about the listing, but an immediate acceptance allays all of her fears instead of adding to them? Apparently so, because she sneaks out at night to go to her gig so that no one can stop her, leaving a note for her sleeping mom, and a text for her dumb boyfriend.

Do I have to keep going? Can’t you already see where this is headed? She is grabbed from the train station (another red flag…who uses trains these days?) by a woman named Nicole, who drives her to a luxurious mansion “in the middle of nowhere”, even though it’s clearly in a normal upscale neighborhood surrounded by tons of houses. This is where she meets a man named Hunter, who will be her photographer. But things don’t take long to take a turn for the weird, as she is fed a number of excuses when inquiring about the apartment she was promised in the ad, eventually being forced to settle for a room within Hunter’s own house for the evening. That wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't locked from the inside. Oh Grace, you dumb bitch.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to piece together the rest: she is held captive in the bedroom, which is filled with cameras, and forced to perform provocative numbers by the most understanding, patient psycho in movie history, who streams the feed to his thousands of followers. As her popularity grows—and as she pisses off Hunter more and more with her uncalculated, uncunning decisions—she is eventually forced to pose nude, which is about the maximum possible sentence for a character in a Lifetime movie.

Really, I don’t get the point of the movie because there’s very little in the way of threat: Poor Grace just doesn’t seem to realize that, as far as trafficked women go, she actually has it pretty well: the man never lays a hand on her, and rarely even raises his voice, nor does she have to do anything sexual (besides pose nude). Hell, Grace is even lucky enough to have this happen to her in a MarVista movie, which ensures that she doesn’t have to endure repeated rapes and beatings, and that her captor is actually attractive! C’mon Grace, can’t you see a silver lining when you're given one?

Speaking of Hunter, he sounds like quite the businessman, doesn’t he? Keeping a house full of women locked up in soundproof rooms with shatterproof windows, and forcing them to heed your every command—that is no doubt a pretty lucrative business. Except that he only keeps one girl at a time, and tends to...dispose of them after they outlive their usefulness. Oh, and he keeps his live-in girlfriend with him, too! Can’t see how this could possibly end up bad, especially when said girl, Nicole, is obviously jealous of Grace immediately—a feeling that only gets stronger when Hunter calls Nicole “Grace” as they are about to bang on a bathroom counter. Ouch. Maybe this guy isn’t so smart after all.

Thankfully for him, Grace is even stupider: So many times she does something that’s actually kind of smart—at least in terms of MarVista standards—only to completely squander it by making an absolutely stupid decision that suddenly puts her life at risk. For example, she talks him into taking her out shopping (what would poor Nicole say?) but then squanders it when she is caught trying to write “Help” on a fitting room mirror in her own blood. 

This movie works best in a way I don’t think it was designed to: as a kind of modern-day “Monkey’s Paw”. Here’s a girl who, in the only two scenes of character development that we get before she moronically responds to that fateful ad, tells her boyfriend she doesn’t love him, and tells her mom she’s going to become a model at any cost. Well, in one fell swoop, she gets exactly that thing she wants, immediately regrets it, and then we're just automatically supposed to feel sorry for her? Be careful what you wish for next time, Lucy...er, Grace! I’m sorry, I know victim blaming is so passe, but c'mon...there just has to be a “dumbness” line somewhere, where if you cross it, you basically deserve whatever happens to you, and Grace doesn't hesitate to jump over that line any chance she gets.

As with most of these Lifetime dramas, Trapped Model comes off as a cautionary tale only for elderly people who retweet and believe everything they see on Facebook, and who have five different accounts because they keep creating new profiles every time they forget the password for their previous one. For everyone else, it's just stupid enough to be a fairly entertaining waste of time...which I guess is a recommendation? I don't even know anymore.

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

• “I'm not wearing any makeup,” Grace says, attempting to get out of an impromptu photo shoot by Hunter, an unlikely story given the obvious coral eyeshadow she's sporting.
• Couldn't Hunter have pretended a little harder to find Grace a rental car?
• Going right up someone's driveway usually isn't a great way to sneak up on them.
• Whoa, this old boyfriend of hers sticks by her side after getting dumped in favor of a modeling scam? What a pussy.
• Another one of their "inspired by true events" stories, which essentially means they take the basic outline of a real-life case, and make it as dumb as they possibly can.

RATING: 5.5/10

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MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: Dad Crush (aka My Teacher, My Obession) (2017)

Director: Damian Romay
Writer(s): Patrick Robert Young
Starring: Rusty Joiner, Lucy Loken, Laura Bilgeri, and Jana Lee Hamblin

aka Dad Crush

Well it's never really a good sign when a movie is available on different streaming platforms under different titles; it's also never a good sign when you see the Marvista logo the moment it starts up. That's two knocks for Dad Crush (on hoopla; My Teacher, My Obsession on Netflix) before the movie itself even starts.

The plot is standard fare for this kind of “thriller”: Chris (played by Rusty Joiner) is a father who uproots his daughter, Riley (Laura Bilgeri) and moves her to an unfamiliar town, where she must start all over again. He is a high-school English teacher, while his daughter, of course, happens to be in high school. Desperate for friends, she takes an immediate liking to Kyla, the mysterious camera-toting student who's always taking photos for the school yearbook, despite never once associating with anyone on the yearbook staff.

Kyla takes an immediate liking to Chris, of course herself a victim of daddy issues, and wants to make him her own—an idea that becomes even easier when it turns out he's secretly dating her mom. I won't get into the possible physics of that attraction, because it defies all logic, but then again, who watches these movies for realism? Anyway, Kyla won't let anyone get in her way, including her own mom and “best friend”, so she sets into motion a series of psychopathic lies and stunts destined to make Chris fall in love with her...well, in her own delusional mind, at least. It's not long before her "elaborate" facade starts unraveling around her, and the truth will be revealed at last.

If you're watching Dad Crush in the way I imagine most people watch Marvista movies, this one is rife with the kinds of scenes and illogic that you came for. Like the scene where the unpopular Riley throws herself an eighteenth birthday party at her own house, one that's somehow filled with dozens upon dozens of kids despite her rarely associating with anyone else but Kyla, who she reveals during a fight (in front of everyone, of course) is her “only friend”. It must be tough being a loner with a hundred kids willing to go to your birthday party. Also, never mind the fact that Chris, a teacher in case you needed reminding, is home during all of it, which I'm guessing would be just a mild conflict of interest to have half the school on your property for a non-school related function. Also never mind the fact that Chris and Riley are in the same class to begin with, something I'm guessing also would never happen.

Or how about the hilarious sequence where Kyla sets her mom up to think Chris is cheating on her with a student, via a series of texts from a stolen cell phone. Angry (and, of course, not listening to his pleas at all despite no other evidence pointing to such a thing), she throws him out, at which point he dejectedly sits out in his truck—in front of their house—where Kyla goes out to “comfort” him by climbing on top of him and forcing her lips onto his, while he “fights back” by simply saying “no” over and over again. Wait, what? So a beefcake high school teacher dumped by a student's mom for supposedly having an illicit relationship with another student would just let the mom's daughter climb on top of him right in front of their house, despite clearly having enough upper body strength to throw her into the next town, if he wanted to? In perhaps the most surprising turn in any low-grade thriller ever, the mom doesn't even see it happen, but if I'm a framed guy trying to prove I don't fuck my students, I'm probably going to have a little more resolve in me than that.

There are many more nuances not worth delving into, like the popular school slut trying to “battle” Kyla for the teacher's “affection”, but we all know how that's going to play out. Also not worth mentioning is the cliffhanger finale, which anyone even semi-familiar with these movies is going to see coming a mile away.

There is one small plus in this whole mess: Credit must be given to the casting department, at least somewhat, because the two leads are what they should be: attractive. While having the teacher be a musclebound freak was a little overboard for me (I don't recall ever seeing a muscle-laden teacher in all my schooling years, save for maybe PE class), Rusty Joiner at least looks like someone his age should look: all too often in these movies, the dad character seems to look the same age as the daughter. Meanwhile, Lucy Loken as the obsessive, flirty high school student is one of the most attractive female leads in any low-rent thriller I've ever seen: it's at least believable, then, when he falls under her spell...well, from a physical standpoint anyway. (And she looks nothing like she does in the movie's poster, which slathers on the makeup and Photoshop effects to a disgusting degree despite her natural beauty.)

The casting lost me a bit with the choice of Kyla's mom--one of those "no way this relationship would ever happen" mismatches that seem obligatory in these movies--but you can't win them all. Other than looks, the cast largely seems capable of acting, but unfortunately aren't required to do much of that at all, while what little talent they do display is overshadowed by the poor lines they're required to deliver, and the baffling actions their characters are required to make.

In summation, if you watch these movies the way we do—to laugh at all the illogical character actions, stilted dialogue, pointless characters, and over-the-top hijinx—you're going to find a lot here to “like”. It's one of those movies that's so bad you swear the cast and crew had to somehow be in on it; the kind of movie that seems impossible to make with any amount of genuine sincerity; the kind of movie where you just wait for that subtle nod that everyone involves understands how atrocious it all is and that they're just in it for the paycheck. As layers upon layers of improbability somehow align; as you sit and stare in shocked disbelief that anyone can take this with any shred of seriousness; as you pray to the gods for a sign that a studio full of grown men are in on the joke that they've made...that's when the end credits start to roll.

RATING: 6/10. (This is a rating based on "entertainment" value, and is in no way comparable to the ratings of "real" movies.)

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