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
TRAILER
