Secret Obsession (TV-14)

There are some movies that are so bad that they’re good. There are others that are so bad that they make you regret the 90+ minutes of your life you will never get back. Netflix’s “Secret Obsession” falls into the latter camp.

If you’d rather not waste the time, the trailer divulges virtually everything in the plot. Jennifer (Brenda Song) is struck by a car and awakes in the hospital to find her doting husband Russell (Mike Vogel) waiting by her side. In the first of many soapy turns of this film, it’s revealed that Jennifer develops amnesia, which means no memory of her husband. After beginning to recover in the hospital, Russell whisks her back to their secluded and sprawling home, tucked away in the mountains. Jennifer slowly begins to realize that things might not be as they seem, and then she stumbles upon the truth – Russell is not her real husband. It then becomes a fight for her life.

I was not exaggerating – all of that was revealed in the trailer. Just the first of many mistakes in this movie. Some may argue this movie is self-aware and playing all the tropes of the stereotypical romantic thrillers that Lifetime churns out. I would argue the opposite. Take the Netflix original movie “The Perfection.” It was clearing riffing on nearly every sub-genre of horror under the sun. But its clever writing, quick pacing, and stellar performances elevated it from what could have been lazy and dull to a thrilling hell of a ride. “Secret Obsession” does not benefit from any of that. 

First and foremost, this film suffers from lazy writing. The depth of the writing feels comparable to that of a high school student’s creative writing piece. Maybe because of that, the story does not feel cohesive in the slightest. The detective assigned to Jennifer’s case (Dennis Haysbert, AKA the iconic voice from the Allstate commercials) is revealed in a scene early on in the movie to have lost his daughter to a cold kidnapping case years prior. That is the only time the detective’s past trauma, which is likely intended to be an emotional punch in the gut, is ever mentioned.

Later in the film, Russell goes into what is supposed to be a menacing monologue tracing the origins of his obsession with Jennifer. Yet it does not provide nearly enough motivation – SPOILER ALERT – for why he would kill her parents and husband just to get to her. That’s right – he kills her family, and we are supposed to believe that Jennifer is completely emotionally healed in the “3 months later” epilogue. 

Perhaps the poor writing is what makes the performances feel so flat – or maybe it’s just the performers themselves. But either way, don’t waste your time with this one.