DEADLY HOLLYWOOD OBSESSION: DTMWaGL #18
In which I wonder: is the antagonist in this film a ghost?
Hello friends! I hope you are in the mood for something deadly, again! Fully one out of every six of my newsletters, 17% of them, start with the word “Deadly.” I’m not proud, or tired. Well I’m a little tired, but that’s my own fault, it’s not DEADLY HOLLYWOOD OBSESSION’s fault. Also, cards on the table: in the time between me watching this movie and me finishing this newsletter, the movie went off Lifetime Movie Club, and taking pictures of my TV is always the last thing I do before sending this out. So the pictures are going to be cobbled together from trailers and IMDb stills, because I am not spending four American dollars to watch it again. A real shame, because I painted the wall behind my tv, and now that reveal is delayed! (Content warnings for stalking and murder.)
An E! News style piece about a split between hot couple Naomi Tills and Sam Austin, who starred in the smash hit MOONBRAKE, is our introduction to this movie. “Moonbrake” is written in the classic typeface Chicago, which was one of my favorite fonts when I was seven. Naomi Tills herself watches this report, which she hates, and then goes to pick up her son Jack. Unfortunately, on her way to do that, someone rear-ends her and then murders her with a gun. LA traffic, am I right!
IN A WORLD….where all the news is about blandly handsome white movie star Sam Austin…two friends watch an interview with Sam Austin. One of them, Casey, happens to teach his kid in elementary school, while the other, TJ, is just incredibly horny for him. So horny for Sam Austin, who is talking about how sad he is that Naomi was murdered, and how hard it’s been on him and his son Jack. TJ says that she could get over that loss if Sam Austin were her daddy, which is just a tar pit of stickiness that I’m not going to navigate.
After school the next day, Casey foils a kidnapping attempt against Sam Austin’s son by mildly observing that his aunt Meredith is supposed to pick him up, not this random twitchy woman who wants to take Jack for ice cream. There are rules, says Casey, and kidnapping? Well, that’s against the rules. After trying and failing to just cram Jack into her car, the lady speeds away. You know, I’ve heard that 800,000 children are kidnapped every year, can I get a confirmation on that? After the police come talk to Casey, Sam Austin brings his private detective, a guy named Bruner, to talk to her, because Bruner’s been trying to track down Sam’s stalker for a while. And you know the cops aren’t any help with stalkers! Ha ha yeah.
Meanwhile, the failed kidnapper, whose name is Lynette, arrives home to the place she shares with her mother, and when she turns her TV on, what’s on? You know it’s a news report about the kidnapping! The anchor reports that the attempted kidnapper is now the only suspect in Naomi Tills’s murder. That seems, incorrect, to me? Considering that there is no physical description more precise than “couple arms, couple legs, human (?)” for Naomi’s killer? But sure! Let’s assume Sam only has one stalker, and it’s this person. Lynette does not enjoy this particular news report, and turns on a Sam Austin movie so she can mouth the words along with it. She seems like she’s in a good place.
The next day, Sam shows up at Casey’s classroom while she’s cramming a sandwich in her mouth. This exact thing has happened to me so many times! A movie star comes to my workplace to thank me for not allowing his child to be kidnapped, and here I am with a mouth full of tofu and sourdough! She has a little fantasy where they bone on the desk but unfortunately she has to cut the visit short so she can go visit her mom in a nursing home. Her mom is in a coma, and Casey is behind on the bills. Between this and the sandwich thing, Casey and I have so much in common!
When Casey arrives home, there are a bunch of paparazzi staked out on her lawn, yelling at her about rescuing Jack, and does that mean she and Sam are dating now, is that how human mating rituals work? She’s fine though, because Sam’s assistant slash childhood best friend Mark is here to whisk her away! He explains to her that she’s part of Hollywood now. I do wonder what would be happening if the teacher who foiled the kidnapping were older, or fat, or a man, but we’ll never know, because it was Casey and this is the movie I’m watching and Casey is going to have dinner at Sam’s house.
When Mark pulls into the driveway, Lynette is skulking around outside and slips unnoticed inside the gate just before it closes. Lynette is a whole grown human who reflects light on the visible spectrum, to be clear. But okay. Jack shows Casey the house while Sam and Mark talk about the stalker situation by a comically tiny pool. Mark says they’re trying to find the stalker but they just can’t. She’s looking at you right now! Try harder! After they eat dinner, prepared by Sam, by the fun-size pool, Sam sends Jack to play on his own and makes Casey an offer: can she homeschool him for the rest of the year? He doesn’t feel safe with Jack in school, and Casey is his favorite teacher. She was hoping to get a full-time position at the school next year, and quitting halfway through this year would look bad. But the money! The money is a lot. So yeah she’s going to take him up on this. And Jack seems cool. He makes little movies on his iPad. Lynette is watching him do that right now, as a matter of fact. Just, right outside the window. Is there anyone watching you from right outside your window right now? Why not check?
The morning after her stalking adventure, Lynette’s mom tells her that she saw the news story about Sam Austin’s new girlfriend (what else would the news be talking about, in 2019? it’s not like they had a pandemic to worry about), and she can’t believe it, she knows Sam and Lynette have something special. And there’s so much to plan for the wedding! Oh. Oh no. There’s a whole thing going on here.
There’s another whole thing going on at Casey’s house, where she’s awoken by her horny friend TJ, who has sent her a Heavy Dot Com style “5 Things to Know About” story, about Casey herself. I’ve been watching this movie for like half an hour and I couldn’t tell you five things about Casey. Across town, Sam’s assistant Mark is also looking at this story, which Sam thinks is wholesome and cute, but Mark doesn’t like the attention it can bring them, with Lynette out there. He says “Lynette” and everything, so it seems like they know who she is? She just lives in a house with her mom, it shouldn’t be that hard to find her? Anyway, Sam decides to treat Casey and TJ to a spa day, because broads love spa days, and sends a car to pick them up. When it arrives, Lynette is sitting in her car across the street, in full daylight. How hard are they trying to find her? If you ask me, it is not hard enough. As soon as Casey and TJ leave, Lynette lets herself into Casey’s house, by way of smashing a window, and then wanders around looking at family photos and knives. While the gal pals at the spa chat about Casey’s new gig (don’t worry about that crazy stalker, TJ, Sam has tons of incompetent security guards), Lynette slices all of Casey’s clothes to ribbons with a chef’s knife and spray paints “BACK OFF BITCH, SAM’S MINE” on a wall. And then she just sits in her car outside watching Casey and TJ get home, like, it truly does not seem like anyone is trying to catch this woman. If the twist is that she is a ghost, I will be zero percent surprised. I will say, “Oh, yeah, that explains why she’s just constantly around, and yet no one can apprehend her.”
Sam is getting a massage in his backyard (classic rich person behavior) when he hears about the situation at Casey’s house, and he sends over his assistant and his personal detective. The detective is pretty sure they’ll find her before the cops will, especially since a neighbor got a license plate number. Are they TRYING at ALL, I am going insane here. Mark tells Casey she should come stay at Sam’s for a while, but TJ overheard Mark and the detective whispering about how there’s some stuff they don’t want the cops to know, and she tells Mark to get lost, Casey can stay with her. Casey opts to stay at Sam Austin’s house though, because,,,,of the security? Not because she wants to bone Sam. No. The security! Which has thus far failed to prevent a kidnapping and a break-in. But! The third time’s the charm. Oh wait the murder too. Well, the fourth time’s the charm.
Casey gets to Sam’s house and Jack shows her the guest room and explains that dinner is at 6:30 and bedtime is 8:30 but she might be able to stay up later since she’s old. Jack is pretty cute. Also, Sam had a friend who works in wardrobe send over a bunch of clothes, since Casey’s were all wrecked. In a better movie, we would get a fashion montage, but in this movie we just get me looking at the guest room and saying, “is that a wine rack on the dresser?” It is. After Jack goes to bed, Sam and Casey drink wine and we learn that Sam is really fussy about coasters, which somehow leads to Casey talking about her dad dying when she was Jack’s age. I genuinely have no idea how we got there. She also dumps the “my mom had a massive stroke and is having a tough recovery and I’m behind on the bills” thing on him. If only she had used a coaster! Sam promises that he’ll be by her side through this and tells her that, by the way, she looks beautiful in the borrowed dress. Then they smooch and make heart eyes at each other, but Casey goes to bed alone.
In the morning, Casey pads down to the kitchen in time to overhear Mark on the phone saying, “Find her, put the gun in the car, then call the cops.” The flaw in this plan is the “find her” part. It might as well be “defeat a griffin in combat, put the gun in the car, then call the cops.” Regardless, he didn’t want to be overheard and quickly hangs up, telling Casey that they got a name attached to the fingerprints they found at her place. Great! Should be really easy to find Lynette at the house where she lives with her mom and her fingerprints! Mark takes off, telling Casey to get Jack up and work on a lesson plan for his, you know, his school….stuff. Casey’s his teacher now! And don’t call Sam, he’s busy in meetings for VINDICATORS, which is either a movie or a support group. However, as Jack and Casey start on a lesson plan, Casey gets a call from the nursing home. Her mom is awake and she wants to talk to Casey! Hooray! But Casey doesn’t have a car at Sam’s, how could she get there? How could she POSSIBLY. Jack points out that he knows where the spare key to his dad’s car is, and they decide to just fuckin go for it. Throw caution to the wind! Field trip! When they get to the nursing home, the administrator thanks her for paying her bills in full, which obviously Sam did. I wonder if there was a scene where Casey gets to talk to her mom and they cut it out, or if they were like, “nah shit’s boring who cares,” but either way we don’t actually see Casey talk to her mom.
When Jack and Casey get home, she’s excited to tell Sam about her mom, but he is extremely and correctly furious that she borrowed his car and took his kid out without asking or leaving a note or texting anyone where they were. The whole point of this setup is: Jack doesn’t get kidnapped. Sam does not care that her mom woke up, he only cares about Jack. Also, coasters.
That night, Casey goes to the kitchen for a glass of water and what’s this? Oh, hi Lynette! Lovely knife you’ve got there! How did you possibly make it past all the security? Lynette informs Casey that she shouldn’t be here, Sam said that we were going to get married when the time was right, and do you think I won’t kill for him? Sam himself wanders into the scene and Lynette screams at him that he is a liar, he said they’d be happy, and Sam is like, “I’ve never met you though?” and then he and Lynette scuffle with the knife, which ends up in Lynette’s gut.
After talking to the police, Sam and Casey sit by the wee pool drinking whiskey. I am so mad that this pool, perfectly sized for miniature donkeys, does not feature in the trailers, I really wanted to show it to you. Casey is freaked out that this woman made up a whole fantasy life but Sam sure doesn’t want to dwell on that, instead apologizing for flipping out on her about her mom. He was just panicking about Jack, because that’s all he has left. That, and his enormous house and his assistant and his movie career and his money. They smooch again, but Casey pulls away and says she should go stay with TJ for a few days. Sam has a better idea: they could take Jack and go to his vacation home! That’s another thing he has left. She agrees, and they smooch some more.
The vacation home is legitimately extremely cute and nice, and Sam Austin should give it to me. As they arrive, TJ texts Casey a link to a story about Sam’s stalker being apprehended (or: dead), and the police mention that the gun used in Naomi’s murder was found in Lynette’s car, so they’re just going to go ahead and close that case. A gun? In a car? Where have I heard that before! Oh ho HO, the game is aFOOT. Sam tells Casey that Mark already told him about Naomi’s murder case being closed, and she brings up the gun in the car, which she thinks is weird because Lynette threatened them with a knife, not a gun, and because she sure did hear Mark say something about planting a gun in a car. Sam is sure it’s fine, he trusts Mark with his life. And this is the life of a guy who made MOONBRAKE, so you know it means something.
Sam cooks dinner. People in movies simply love a platter piled high with whole green beans. While his dad cooks, Jack watches some movies on his iPad and Casey looks over his shoulder to see a video of Sam and Naomi drinking wine and flirting. Naomi is wearing the same dress Casey was wearing the first night at Sam’s house, and Sam says to her, “you look beautiful in that dress,” just like he did with Casey. This is treated as a massive revelation and I literally for the life of me cannot figure out the implication. I am not good with nuance, but also, ????? Sam calls Jack away and Casey pulls up another video (thank God for Jack, honestly), starring Sam and Lynette! Together! In which Sam tells Lynette that he loves her and wants to be with her and gives her a gun to murder Naomi with! The mic on this iPad is incredible. Apple deserves all their trillions of dollars and also to never pay taxes. Unfortunately, Sam saw Casey watch these implausibly inculpatory videos. “It’s not my best work but I thought it was believable,” he drawls. He explains that Naomi gave Jack the iPad; she was always doing things like that, without his permission, even after she rode his coattails to stardom. Whenever I see with a kid with an iPad, I’m going to ask their parents who rode whose coattails to stardom here. That’s where iPads come from. And Naomi was going to take Jack away from him after they split up! “So you killed her,” surmises Casey, finally, yes, obviously. “What?” says Jack, who has wandered back into the scene, but who probably could have put this together himself and saved us all a lot of time. Casey throws a pot of boiling water at Sam (all men know how to cook is pasta), grabs Jack, and makes a break for it.
Casey and Jack run through the forest, pursued by Sam, who hollers, “you can’t hide out here!” when in fact you absolutely can, a forest is a great place to hide. They hunker down in a hollow tree until Casey tells Jack that he has to call 911 while she goes out to distract Sam. Sam, wandering around in the forest, a place you can easily hide, yells toward Casey that she can be his new wife! Jack’s new mom! Wouldn’t that be fun! until she brains him with a rock. Good job. Sam and Mark are shortly arrested. It’s fine. The fabled Aunt Meredith is here, so is TJ. Also fine.
There’s a little stinger scene “a few months later” that basically just shows that Casey and Jack are still alive, and that Casey is working at the school again. I could have assumed that, I guess, but thanks? What about a few months after that, and a few months after that? Surely Aunt Meredith can’t keep Jack alive for more than six seven months. The end, though, except for the fact that there is someone in the credits of this movie named “Sebastian ‘Bang Bang’ Mazzola.” Bring me a movie about Mr. Bang Bang please. Maybe that will next time, here on Don’t Threaten Me With a Good Lifetime! Better share with all your friends, just in case! Also give me your money, if you want! If not for me, for Sebastian “Bang Bang” Mazzola.
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