MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: Deadly Switch (2019)

Director: Svetlana Cvetko
Writer(s): Chris Sivertson
Starring: Hayley McLaughlin, Danika Yarosh, Dylan Walsh, and Teri Polo

Whoa, this custom-made DVD cover is cooler than anything in the movie. (Courtesy of CoverCity)

Man, oh man. I’ve seen some terrible MarVista movies (easy to do because that includes virtually all of them), but this one just might take the cake as the worst of a bad bunch.

Ana is a foreign exchange student from Scotland, who becomes the target of a physical stalker almost immediately, despite not knowing anyone in the city. Thankfully, she is saved by Monica, a wannabe punk girl who confronts the hooded figure and gets him to run away (hmmm, coincidence?). The harassment of Ana continues, only this time, it’s via her mobile device, so Monica gets a plan: “Say, let’s get away from here and go to my family’s swanky house in some small town with a stupid-as-shit name!” Excited at the prospect of not only having a new friend, but also a new family, Ana instantly agrees.

Oh, and did I mention that Ana looks just like Monica’s young sister, Camilla, who died in a car accident several years back? I don’t know how I could forget that, because the movie makes sure you don’t, hammering the point home whenever the writer feels like there’s been more than five minutes between the last mention of it, and that you might forget just how striking the resemblance is. Every character who comes into contact with Ana stares with startled recognition, as if that’s Camilla herself, still in the flesh. Even Camilla's own parents stare at Ana with a mix of shock and disbelief that doesn't just border on the uncomfortable: it runs over it, backs up over it, then runs it over again. Three times.

Only, they don't, unless your only requirement for thinking two people look alike is having similar-colored hair of a similar length. Seriously, it's more shocking how unsimilar the two characters look. I was dreading the idea that the filmmakers would just fall back on the lazy idea of using the same actress for both roles, and was initially happy to learn they didn't...this may be the first time when they really just should have.

From the outset, we can tell that something isn’t quite right: They invite her to stay as long as she wants, and let her sleep in Camilla’s bed, in the very same bedroom they haven’t touched since she died. Okay, sure, none of this is weird at all. Monica even contacts Ana via a walkie placed under her pillow, a supposedly touching throwback to when the two sisters were alive and would talk to each other at night. (“I’m surprised these things still work,” a shocked Monica explains, adding that they haven’t been used “in years”; I want to know what brand of batteries they use that, you know, last forever.)

But apparently, “red flags” don’t exist in Scotland, because Ana ignores a plethora of questionable behaviors from her new “family”, such as: a ‘father’ who constantly dwells on how she's a ‘good girl’; a ‘mother’ who stares at her far longer than you should stare at anyone unless you are dead, and who confesses to being force-fed drugs (??); a terrifying dinner involving another family whose female members are also clearly abused; and a ‘sister’ that continues to dispel any rumors, defending her father even as the case around him is clearly evident. I know victim blaming is politically incorrect these days, but when you ignore more red flags than there are in China, you pretty much deserve to get what's coming to you.

The “twist” is…well, I think it’s supposed to be a twist, yet it’s so obvious I’m not even going to warn you about possible spoilers, is that they want to keep her as part of their family! Well, there is a “twist” twist, which I will NOT reveal, but it’s somehow even stupider than the rest of the movie. 

Honestly, this is one of the worst anythings I've seen in recent memory. Ana, whose cuteness (and Scottish accent) are the two sole positives in the entire shitshow, is also one of the stupidest main characters in the history of history, oblivious to every little thing until the evil is spelled out for her, and far too trusting of someone she just met. When you go to a random coffee shop and a random barista there recounts the story of how weird the family that you're staying with—and know nothing about—is, it's probably a good idea to at least file that information away, rather than asking someone directly implicated in it whether or not it's true. (Why do they always seem to do that in these movies? “You better watch out for Beth...she's evil.” [next scene] “Beth, I heard that you're evil. Is that true?”)

The writing is abysmal, with pacing so wildly uneven that it’s numbing in its awfulness. You know how jokes only work when there is a setup involved? Well, the writer of Deadly Switch (one Chris Sivertson) doesn't seem to have a fundamental understanding of that whole “buildup-climax” payoff; it's the equivalent of telling nothing but punchlines, with no context or gradual increase in tension. And with such a small range of characters, something these movies probably do to reign in the budget, there's not even any room for red herrings: everything is blatantly obvious from literally within the first five minutes. 

In other words, this movie is just frustratingly bad: not “funny bad”, or “entertainingly incompetent”, or any other group of adjectives that you hope to be able to use in describing a MarVista production. It's more along the lines of “appallingly boring”, and "boring" is the worst possible thing that a movie can be. 

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

-Why does Ana go for a walk alone on her first day with Monica’s family, and decide that walking through someone’s yard is a good idea? Furthermore, why is she so shocked when the homeowner yells at her and tells her not to trespass, that she has to discuss it with Monica later? It is, after all, her goddamned yard.
-“I feel like someone is watching me”, Ana says, shortly after receiving a card that says, “I’m Watching You”
-If you want to make sure someone you are forcing medicine on has taken their pill, simply looking into their mouth is apparently sufficient.
-Opening scene is Ana doing homework in a bar. Later, she explains that her roommate is weird, “hence the homework in a bar.” I’m sorry, you’re in college living on a campus…surely there must be some libraries or coffee shops around?

RATING: 0.5/10

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Bad Match (2017)

Director: David Chirchirillo

Writer(s): Chirchirillo

Starring: Lili Simmons, Kahyun Kim, Noureen DeWulf, and Jack Cutmore-Scott

David Chirchirillo’s Bad Match is the kind of thriller where you just get the feeling that nothing is as cut and dry as it seems. The tale at its center—about a woman who “falls victim” to a completely consensual one-night stand and then won’t let go—is as conventional as they come, yet gradually we begin to realize there might be more to the story. The inevitable twist is both shocking, and—like the best of them—logical upon review, ending the film on a strong note. And while its strength can’t overpower a few weak scenes, Bad Match is still a movie that is way better than we were expecting.

Harris is a twentysomething hipster who works at a marketing agency. When he’s not at work, he’s either playing online video games, or using online dating apps to source some new pussy. Harris is the perfect kind of douchebag for the millennial era: good-looking and suave, he has bagging women down to a science. He is also the master of escape, sneaking out in the middle of the night to return home in time for a couple hours of sleep before having to get ready for work.

One night, he “matches” with a girl named Riley. Upon waking up to find him sneaking out, she attempts to get him to stay the night. When he refuses, she is more persistent than the others, although he still manages to worm his way out of it. That persistence is a little bit of foreshadowing that she’s not like the other girls, and sees dating apps more for what the name implies, rather than for what guys like Harris use them for.

The following morning, Harris wakes up to texts from Riley—they don’t stop when he’s at work, either. Or when he’s at home trying to get stuff done for a big project he’s working on…a project that’s forgotten once she sends him a suggestive picture. That’s all it takes for his annoyance to disappear, and he invites her over to his place this time, to have another session of wild intercourse. Bad move.

He has to get up for work. She turned off the alarm. He has a big meeting that day and is late. Too late, it turns out. She apologizes. He doesn’t have time to wait for her to leave, so he bolts off to work in a hurry, assuming she will follow through on her plan to take an Uber home. But we know things aren’t going to be that easy for poor Harris; we’re probably the only ones not shocked when Riley is still at his house when he returns home.

She continues to call him in the ensuing days, and he continues to ignore her. Things reach a fever pitch when she catches him at a bar—on a day he said he was sick—with a couple of friends, and overhears him describing her as sad and pathetic, among other things. Understandably, this doesn’t sit well with her, and she curses him out, swears him off, and storms out of the door. And this is when things really start to spiral out of control for poor Harris. He loses his job. He’s arrested on child pornography charges. Desperate for a confession from Riley to clear his name, he decides to take matters into his own hands.

Bad Match been declared an attack on toxic masculinity and dating apps; to agree to the former argument, one would have to dismiss some truly psychotic behavior from our “heroine”, yet merely calling it a takedown of dating app culture oversimplifies the film, calling to mind any number of tired attacks on the current climate of millennials and internet dating. Bad Match at least strives to be more than just your typical “woman goes crazy” thriller, and it largely succeeds, thanks to great performances from the cast, and the twist that brings it all together in the end. It’s slightly undone by some truly unbelievable sequences—as in, completely illogical actions that detract from the overall believability of the story—but these are thankfully kept to a minimum.

We had no ideas of what to expect going into it, with the movie being lumped in the “You May Also Like” section of Netflix with low-grade Lifetime-style schlock, but this is at least a suspense film with a brain.

RATING: 6/10

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MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: Twinsanity (aka Downward Twin) (2018)

Director: Buz Wallick
Writer(s): Julian Broudy
Starring: Karissa Strain, Katie Strain, Yves Bright, and Angie Everhart

This also goes by the gag-inducing alternate title Downward Twin.

There are few ideas (besides quality ones) that MarVista won’t touch, and here they put their indelible mark on the “evil twin” trope that’s been done a zillion times before. The results are about what you’d expect: flat, predictable, and lifeless, though there are (thankfully) moments of humor, both unintentional and inadvertent, to make it at least somewhat entertaining.

Leeann and Celeste Hart are successful fitness instructors who have big dreams for their brand, cleverly labeled One Hart. But when their mother dies, leaving each of them with a decent chunk of money, the duo’s once healthy relationship quickly deteriorates: Celeste wants to break away from her sister to find herself, a notion that Leeann will have none of. And, like the best of psychotic sisters, she will stop at nothing to keep Celeste focused on her own one-sided dream, and to keep the Hart team together…forever!

One of the main problems with MarVista movies is that the material often comes off like adult stories told by children: Except for rare instances of truly disturbing material (such as the nanny’s backstory in Nanny Cam), everything in their movies are so watered-down, that it removes anything remotely resembling something impactful. Take, for example, when Twinsanity devolves into a mindless slasher movie (from just a mindless thriller): The kills are biteless, which in turn makes our killer biteless, which in turn dulls the edges of a “sharp” thriller, turning it into little more than the movie equivalent of a butter knife. There’s no tension, there’s no urgency…it’s all just a pedestrian thriller that has no interest in straying from the path of predictability.

One thing that is smart (besides the obvious choice to cast actual twins in the role) is that, while identical twins, there are (generally) enough physical differences that it’s easy to tell who is who, just from looking at them. I suppose the makeup and hair stylists are probably mostly to thank for that, but it prevents things from getting too confusing, especially during the scenes when one is impersonating the other.

Unfortunately, the one time I apparently did get confused was in the final scene, and I must confess I’m still unsure of what to make of it: Without wanting to divulge too much, the final shot lingers on one of the twins, with that twin’s identity playing a huge role in the story’s outcome. I thought for sure I knew which one it was (and still do), but my wife and another online plot synopsis experts seem to go against the grain with my thoughts. So I guess in a way the ending can be considered ambiguous, though maybe I'm just too stubborn to admit that I'm wrong and dumb.

Either way, Twinsanity (which also goes by the hilariously terrible alternate title Downward Twin, a forced reference to Celeste's love for yoga) represents MarVista at their worst-best: It's all a godawful, ill-advised mess, but most of it is so bad it's humorous, rather than frustrating (though, to be clear, there are still plenty moments in the latter camp, as well), making it the perfect thriller to put on when you're not at all in the mood for an actual thriller.

RATING: 6/10

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MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: He Knows Your Every Move (aka Deadly Hack) (2018)

Director: Lane Shefter Bishop
Writer(s): Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch
Starring: Drew Seeley, Rosalie McIntire, Sofia Pernas, and Andrew Kai

Once again, I have to wonder something aloud that I've asked many times before in the limited time I've been reviewing them: Just how self-aware is MarVista to the quality of their movies? I mean, they obviously follow the same formulas, and they are popular enough to be a multi-million dollar studio, but they have to be aware that people are laughing at them and not with them…right?

The latest evidence is He Knows Your Every Move, a movie that feels as if it was written by an elderly person inspired by a meme about identity theft that they received on Facebook. It’s a series of increasingly frustrating yet predictable sequences that quickly build up far beyond the scope of reality, and into a bizarre alternate universe, where women are completely oblivious to the bright red flags of sociopathic behavior, and the bright red flash of a webcam that always seems to be on, even when it’s not in use.

Molly is a highly successful recipe vlogger who has everything she thinks she needs in her life…except, a man. She feels she doesn’t have time for one, but of course her friends know her better than she does, so they push her into the dating scene. Her reluctant decision to date based on her pushy friends becomes a little less reluctant when she has a run-in with Jack during one of her daily jogs. He's a (mildly) handsome, charming man; between that and the few common interests they share right off the bat, that’s enough to win her over. Before you know it, they’re on their first date, then in bed together (MarVista's getting edgy!).

The “coincidences” mount with alarming intensity: he likes the same under-the-radar restaurant in Akron, OH (so much that he recites the name of the place before she does); likes the same bands and the same kinds of movies; constantly bumps into her in completely random places; speaks as if he is reciting carefully-choreographed sentences (though that just may be the acting; hard to tell in some of these movies); and, in perhaps the most telling characteristic, refuses to talk about his past, always changing the subject when pressed for information. Any one of these things would at least start to raise a red flag: any combination of two would put most people on high-alert. But to have ALL of those things in common…well, I’d say you have a better chance of making a perfect NCAA tournament bracket.

Once it all comes out and he makes his sociopathic tendencies known, the extent to which this man terrorizes her life from having access to her computer is hilariously over-the-top, as he is able to drain her bank account (AND ADD fraudulent charges FROM THE PAST), show up anywhere uninvited, send alternate (read: sexy and inappropriate) photos to her boss in lieu of a very important assignment, email plagiarized recipes for the same assignment, kidnap her ex-boyfriend, track her locations via a necklace he gave her (and that she curiously still wears, even after breaking up) and—in perhaps the most heinous, heartless act the world has ever seen—leave a one-star Yelp review for the restaurant her and her friends frequent. So much weight do her words carry (despite the fact no one at all seems to recognize her out in public) that, as a result of said review, the restaurant loses 90% of its business literally overnight. Oh, and did I mention that the token black friend—who is the first to voice concern about his actions, before agreeing they should get married not ten seconds later—is a police officer?

None of the ensuing mess is helped by the reactions to Molly’s apparent “meltdown”, in which no one at all believes her, despite this being completely out-of-character for her: The bank places a freeze on her account “while they investigate” citing that the fraudulent charges do not appear odd; her best friend believes she’s lying when she insists she didn’t invite Jack to her wedding reception, despite his history of doing such things; her boss forces her to take a leave of absence after receiving the plagiarized documents and sexy pictures, even though she would have no logical reason to do that; the restaurant’s manager is so devastated by her one-star review, that he can’t stop to realize for one second that she legitimately seems confused by the notion that she left his restaurant a poor rating, and probably wouldn’t show her face there again if she did. Really, all we learn is that basically everyone except Molly and her ex-boyfriend are complete pieces of shit.

The “ex”, while good-looking , takes some getting used to on a “personal level”, looking doofy and awkward in early scenes as his character (unmotivated stoner-rocker type) is established, and then randomly showing up to awkwardly linger around in later scenes just to show he still cares. He even proves to be relatively worthless as a hero, being kidnapped by the crazed kidnapper with, we imagine, very little effort of resistance.

By the end, though it's obvious he's one of the better aspects of the movie, along with the main star, who are attractive and decent enough actors that they would be able to carry the brunt of a “better” MarVista movie on their shoulders. But no one could save this epic turd of a movie, which is bad on so many levels that you’d swear the writer just Googled “identity theft” and believed the first paid search result that came up. Surely the studio knows this is a cringeworthy mess with no real redeeming qualities...right?

RIGHT?!

RATING: 2/10

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MARVEL-LESS MARVISTA: The Work Wife (2018)

Director: Michael Feifer
Writer(s): Feifer
Starring: Cerina Vincent, Elisabeth Harnois, Kevin Sizemore, and Preeti Desai

MarVista Entertainment’s The Work Wife takes place in the kind of world where doors don’t exist, continuity and characterizations don’t matter, and no one seems to have any awareness of their own surroundings. How else can you explain why characters who are trying to be secretive, obliviously perform said actions right out in the open, in full view of co-workers? Or how characters’ beliefs change on a whim, with nothing remotely resembling just cause or believability? Or how no one locks their doors, even when the immediate threat of danger is present? Or how a character is murdered by being flung down stairs in the middle of a packed party, with no witnesses? (Also, how is it that throwing someone down stairs is even an option for murder in thrillers, considering the odds of the victim actually dying is pretty slim on a standard staircase?)

Sean Miller is the new executive at an advertising firm. His assistant, Jen, is immediately smitten with him, and—judging from the completely blatant staredown he gives her upon meeting her for the first time—those feelings are reciprocated. They only seem to intensify when Sean’s first meeting lands his firm their biggest client account to date. But there’s just one problem with pursuing a relationship with Jen: Whether or not he wants to be, Sean is married.

His wife, Lisa, is a graphic designer (of course!) who’s looking to return to work after taking a break following the move for Sean's job. Well, the whole marriage thing doesn’t seem to deter Jen, who invites Sean’s wife, Lisa, out with the work family one night and tosses lines out like “There’s a joke going around that I’m his work wife,” (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the point) while getting a video of her badmouthing a client's alcoholic beverage brand. Uh oh, can’t see how that could be used against Lisa at any point, like when she’s brought on board as a graphic designer (at Jen's urging) and the video is played during a meeting with executives of the Gin Tonic company—the very one she’s badmouthing!

Things progress from there, with Jen stalking Sean, who (surprisingly!) refuses all of her advances, eventually becoming disgusted with her as her obsession quickly reaches a fever pitch. It should come as no shock that this isn't the first boss of hers that she has grown infatuated with...and at least one previous one even ended in murder. Can Lisa and Sean survive Jen’s murderous ways, or will they succumb to her boss fetish like others before?

Being a MarVista film, there are plenty of issues at play here, though the biggest one is logic: even after Jen’s obsessive qualities become more and more apparent, Lisa still threatens to leave Sean based solely on Jen's word-of-mouth evidence, believing the habitual liar who set their house on fire, sabotaged Lisa's job, sent threatening texts to herself with Sean’s phone (which she acquired by walking through their front door at night, and literally taking it off their dresser as they slept three feet away), and murdered her last spouse, over the man she’s been married to for several years, and who, by all indications, has always been faithful to her. Okay, makes sense.

Or the random scene where a spurned character from earlier in the film, who by this point we have completely forgotten about, shows up at a party to drunkenly answer the phone and stand awkwardly in a doorway right out in the open to talk to someone about his plans to have Jen taken in by the police in the morning. Of course, somehow, amidst the dozens of partygoers in an obnoxiously loud party atmosphere, at a sprawling multi-story mansion, she zones in on him and gets so close she can hear his words without him even noticing. 

Not helping matters is the acting, which is pretty bad across the board, with a special nod going to the drunk guy, who acts as if he just came out of a coma following trauma to his brain rather than an individual who's merely inebriated. How these things can not only get greenlit, but also go into production, pass through an editing room, and presumably go through screenings for executives and/or test audiences without anyone feeling remarkable guilt or shame for unleashing these hellish monstrosities on the world is something I will never understand.

Occasionally, it even has the gall to make a play at framing this whole story as some sort of feminist war-cry, insinuating that several women within the firm are in on Sean’s undoing, but never fully exploring that story angle outside of one or two random scenes. That might have actually been its best bet, but it's yet another idea that seems to have been abandoned in favor of a by-the-numbers thriller that's completely devoid of thrills.

About the only things preventing it from being a complete bomb are the presence of Preeti Desai, who is gorgeous but wasted in a limited role as Sean (and Jen's) boss, and the simple fact that Sean never physically cheats on his wife, at least avoiding one cliché prevalent in the typical “obsession” movie. Other than those two things, The Work Wife functions best as a study to see just how abysmally thrill-less a thriller can be.

RATING: 3/10

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