Hello, friends! HER DEADLY GROOM seems like a normal “woman marries man who turns out to be bad” Lifetime movie on the surface, but surprise! Eric Roberts is in this! Are you aware of the sheer volume of things Eric Roberts has been in? He is currently, according to IMDb, filming sixteen projects, including one called “G.O.D.Tech” in which he plays “Angel of the Messiah.” I am not sure if I’ve even taken sixteen showers this year. Incredible. There’s the rest of the movie, and there’s Eric Roberts, so let’s get started. (Content warnings for stalking, murder, and drugging. Allergen warning for peanuts.)
We are very briefly introduced to a nice sweet couple taking a hike outside Los Angeles. Then the man shoves his girlfriend off a cliff and quips that he told her he’d show her a view she’d never forget. I bet she hated his jokes while she was alive, but she’s dead now. Title screen!
Well, anyway, a woman named Alison is carrying boxes to her car while talking to her friend Brenna on the phone. As she struggles with the boxes, an allegedly handsome man helps her get them into her trunk. It’s the guy from the first scene, of course. Alison and this guy make aggressive eye contact, but she’s a busy businesswoman on the go. She has to meet Brenna at her house so they can open up those boxes and reveal that they’re full of peanut butter. Peanut butter! It’s in jars, it’s not just boxes full of loose peanut butter. Alison and Bren are peanut butter entrepreneurs. Is this on the list of jobs Lifetime movie protagonists are allowed to have? I suppose it is, because it led me to ask “is this a real job anyone has?” which is kind of like the Tenth Amendment of the list of Lifetime movie jobs. Alison’s teen daughter Nicky slides through the scene to introduce herself and her boyfriend Jake to us, and Jake hints at his tragic backstory when he lightly scolds Nicky for complaining about her overprotective mom. She’s lucky to have a mom who loves her! What a reasonable teen (?) boy.
While someone lurks outside snapping photos of the house, Bren crows about a date she has tonight with some guy she met on an app. And by the way, Alison should get on the app, she should start dating again, it’s been a year since her divorce. I thought Alison seemed wounded and vulnerable. Bren declares that Ali deserves a better man than George and unilaterally makes her a profile on “Luvvy.” If there’s a funnier ex-husband name than “George,” I’ve never heard it. As Alison tries to prevent Bren from publishing the profile, they scuffle for the phone and drop it, and it’s picked up by none other than the star of 1996’s It’s My Party, Eric Roberts. He’s George! He put on black leather gloves and sauntered into the house unnoticed for no discernible reason, and he’s here now, holding Ali’s phone with the dating profile. George simpers about how he can’t imagine Alison dating, she’s so safe and responsible, and Bren snaps that at least she wasn’t dating anyone during the marriage. He also shuts down Ali’s objections to him wandering into her house by pointing out that technically it was his house first, he’s just letting her live there until Nicky leaves for college. And then he leaves! Nice to see you, Eric Roberts of Fast Sofa (2001) fame. Bren also has to leave, and she agrees to delete the dating profile, which is tied to her own email, in a week, if Ali still wants her to. And then, as someone is still lurking outside, Bren gets in her black VW Beetle, which has a damn GADSDEN FLAG placard on the front, and drives away. What! What!!!!! What!
After a brief montage of peanut butter business, Alison asks Bren to delete the profile. Bren wants to look at the matches first, and they stop on a good-looking (?) guy named Vincent. Alison recognizes him as the guy who helped put boxes of peanut butter in her trunk (not a sex thing), and wonders what someone like him is doing on Luvvy. He just looks like a dude! Maybe he’s Alison’s type but he just looks like a dude. Alison matches with Vincent, and that night he messages her. He totally remembers her, and he’s been kicking himself for not getting her number when he helped her load her car. I believe it, because he’s hanging out wearing a tank top and a chain, in a messy room surrounded by pictures of Alison and statements of her business’s finances and life insurance policies. Imagine going through all that printer ink and not even getting her digits. Alison mentions her daughter, and Vincent says he doesn’t have any kids but he’s open to it, if he meets the right person. He is FIFTY years OLD, come on. He asks Alison to dinner and she accepts. One assumes that her decision would be different if this was a video chat, not only because of all the stalker material around but also? The dead notary public whose apartment Vincent is occupying. You gotta do ONE Facetime, we all know this.
Saturday has arrived, and with it Alison’s date with Vincent, at a…bar that also makes steaks? I went to one of those with my parents once and there was literally nothing I could eat, so we sweet-talked the cook into grilling me a bunch of vegetables for dinner and have y’all ever had a grilled carrot? Oh my god. Vincent declares it a “hidden gem” that one of his most important clients tipped him off to. But enough about me and my successful career, what about Alison? What’s PB&A? Alison tries to say “it’s a small startup” before admitting that it’s peanut butter, it’s always been peanut butter, it stands for “Peanut Brenna & Alison.” As someone who named their own business venture something inscrutable in the abbreviation and ridiculous in full: that’s cute! Don’t be embarrassed about that! Vincent likes it, and says he’d love to try her peanut butter sometime, with the beautiful creator of the peanut butter. Sensually eating peanut butter at Alison. He orders for her, and they have a great date, I guess, because by the time Alison gets home and goes to show her daughter Vincent’s Luvvy profile, it’s gone.
Vincent picks up Alison for another date and introduces himself to Nicky and her boyfriend Jake, who’s really sure they’ve met before. Do you think that’ll come back? A fun time dating montage ensues, but it takes me a minute to realize it’s a montage so I think she’s on a swan boat in the park wearing the sexy red dress she wore for their date. I got there.
A few months pass, and Alison and Bren pack some peanut butter orders while Ali hums to herself because she’s getting some. Happy time is interrupted when Bren gets a report from their accountant showing that they’ve only sold eight jars of peanut butter in the last month, which seems low. That does….seem low. While Bren panics about how it was stupid to try to sell peanut butter (yeah), Ali gets a message from Vincent and decides to just bail on this situation. They go for a walk at the park (“I came here all the time as a kid,” “I thought you grew up on the East Coast?” “oh uh yeah I visited my grandma a lot” very normal) and Vincent, a very successful businessman who drives a Mercedes, offers Alison a loan to save her business. She tells him she needs $50,000 to fulfill a big box store they have in the pipe, and he wants to give it to her. It’s an investment in a peanut butter he believes in. They smooch, but then she doesn’t take the money. Bren yells at her later, and Ali says she’ll think about it. They do not seem good at business. Peanut butter doesn’t sell itself! Alison does agree to take the money on their next date, as long as they get lawyers and accountants involved, and then Vincent excuses himself to take a Business Call (he’s a Business Man) that is a flimsy pretext (is there any other kind of pretext?) to take pictures of Alison’s business statements and passport.
In another scene of business words, Vincent then takes those documents to an insurance agency and gets “key man insurance” as the “primary investor” in PB&A, meaning he’ll get $2 million if Alison dies. Is this a real thing? Probably. Do not tell me.
Vincent spirits Alison and Nicky away for a ski vacation, and when they return home, it’s to a letter from George informing Alison that he will be taking his house back, thanks. Alison storms over to his house, where the star of Bob Fosse’s controversial 1983 film Star 80 tells her that his girlfriend broke up with him and he’s having money problems, so yeah, he needs the house. Also, he told Alison not to put all her alimony into that damn peanut butter business! That’s fair. Alison asks how she ever married him, and George sighs and says he doesn’t know. What else can you say! Would you marry Eric Roberts? Could you? Sound off.
Unfortunately for Alison and Nicky, there’s nothing her lawyers can do, since it’s literally George’s house. Bren helps Ali look for a place, but the only one that looks promising is shot down by Jake, who points out that it’s “drug deal central,” which he knows because, you know, he used to do drugs. He’s fine now though, we’re all proud of him. Vincent comes over and Alison complains about her situation. Let’s all say it in unison: “why don’t you come live with me?” suggests Vincent. Because he’s soooo rich, his place is huge, and she and Nicky can have their own private entrance. Like…servants? Or tenants? Vincent is just so happy he met Alison, it’s the least he can do. He hasn’t even looked at another woman in months! Then there’s a cute little cut to him banging a real estate agent on the counter of a big fancy kitchen. While she puts her realtor hat back on, Vincent scans?? the house key?? with an app??? Is that a real thing? The realtor says the house’s owners are staying in Europe, and nobody has even looked at this gigantic property in a month. He can have it for a steal! “That’s my favorite way to get things,” replies Vincent. People have got to stop setting this guy up.
Vincent welcomes Alison, Nicky, and Jake to his enormous stolen house, yanking the for sale sign out of the lawn and tossing it next to the driveway as they drive up. While Alison and Vincent are all starry-eyed (Ali, did you not think it was weird he’d never invited you to his house, ever?? was he just living in that notary public’s apartment for the past six months?? with a dead body????) Jake immediately notices the sign and Vincent is like, “haha, I was going to put it on the market but then my life became full of love!” He gives Nicky approximately three seconds to see her new house and then informs her they have to Go Somewhere. Such a buzzkill, this Jake. Alison and Vincent are so happy! Her smile is all the rent check he needs. In fact, he’s…he’s falling in love with her. So sweet.
In the morning, the realtor returns to the house and is very surprised indeed to find people living in it. To her credit, she realizes immediately how Vincent tricked her and what he’s up to, like thank god someone in this movie fully sees through him, but unfortunately she has this realization out of Alison’s earshot, out in the driveway. When she threatens to go get the cops, Vincent breaks this woman’s neck right in the damn driveway, in broad daylight, and shoves her body in her car, grabbing an engagement ring off her finger because the man knows a good deal when he sees one. He drives the body away, and by the time he gets back it’s nighttime, and Alison is reading in bed. “Boy, it sure did take a while to set that realtor straight!” says Alison, and Vincent says, “haha yeah, let’s get married!” and I am barely simplifying. He gives her the ring he took off the dead realtor’s dead finger, and she loves it. These two crazy kids are getting married!
Nicky and Jake have some thoughts about that, though. Jake’s dad was a small-time crook and the way Vincent acts gives him those same vibes, and also he’s tried to find him online and can’t find anything about him even though he’s some big fancy business boy. Nicky volunteers that her dad runs background checks for his job, and they go to his house while he’s out to use his computer. Except he’s not out! George objects to the use of his computer, and also, in a vaguer sense, to his ex-wife marrying some young stud. He agrees to ask a private investigator friend to look into Vincent. What does George do? Running background checks and cheating on your wife does not a career make.
Maybe George realizes this himself. The next time he picks up Nicky, he apologizes to Alison for how he’s been acting, being mean, and drunk-dialing her, and he knows that’s what drove her toward “that younger guy.” I can’t tell if the movie thinks this is a joke? About how Eric Roberts, you know, Systems Analyst Farraday from Q-4: Dream Corporation (2018), is easily 20 years older than Alison? It’s very strange. Maybe Eric Roberts wrote his own lines. Nicky comes out, and George wraps up his apology with the single syllable “um.” Good stuff, George. Really persuasive.
Are you ready for a twist? We have a twist. Vincent shows up at George’s house and George asks him what the hell he’s doing here, and also he’s reconsidering that whole “I will pay you to marry my wife so I don’t have to pay alimony” plan he came up with. George! This behavior is not suitable for a member of the ensemble cast of the 2012 miniseries Bullet in the Face! George offers to pay Vincent what he owes him if he’ll just back off of Alison, but Vincent is pretty sure he’s come up with a better plan here: he’ll kill George, and Alison will inherit his money because he never changed his will, and then he’ll kill Alison and inherit all her money. It’s a bulletproof plan. Bullet in the face-proof. Vincent whacks him in the back of the head and pours a bottle of bourbon on him. He’s so clumsy! “That’s why they call it a drinking problem,” sneers Vincent as he empties the bourbon. Vincent. No one can hear you, Vincent.
Alison is moving her stuff out of George’s house when a cop shows up to tell her that George is dead now, he hit his head when he was drinking and he died. Case closed! They have a funeral, and afterwards Bren consoles Ali and it seems like they’re going to kiss for a second but they don’t. They were college roommates though, so I bet they have. Anyway, Ali tells her best friend that they’re going to stay in the house until Nicky goes to college, and then after their courthouse wedding, Vincent will just move in with her. And the wedding is in three weeks! No reason to postpone it that I can think of.
And now it’s the wedding day! They’re having a nice backyard reception with cake and champagne. Bren, as maid of honor, goes to retrieve Alison’s phone from the bedroom when she realizes she left it there, but finds Vincent’s phone first. There’s an email on the lock screen about the hefty insurance policy Vincent has on Alison, and Bren realizes that he took it out just as they started dating. She writes the policy number on a cocktail napkin, zips it tidily into her purse, and then finds Vincent watching her from the doorway. “Ha ha!” says Bren. “Ha ha, is this your phone? I thought it was Ali’s, ha ha! Women are so silly, always confusing our friends’ phones with our friends’ extremely sketchy new husband’s phones! Ha ha!” Vincent agrees that this kind of thing can happen when you drink too much champagne. Another thing that can happen when you drink too much champagne is being pushed down the stairs. That can happen if you’re sober too. You could be pushed down the stairs at any time. Anyway, Vincent pushes Bren down the stairs. She’s taken to the hospital alive but unconscious, and it doesn’t look good. Ali sits by her bedside and says “Peanut butter Brenna, we’ve been through so much together,” and it’s important to remember a human being wrote that line and forced another human being to say it.
Alison eventually leaves the hospital and goes home to apologize to Vincent for not going on their honeymoon because her best friend and business partner is clinging to life in a hospital bed. So selfish and unreasonable. She idly opens Bren’s purse and finds the cocktail napkin with a bunch of letters and numbers on it. “Maybe it was some guy’s number from the courthouse,” suggests Vincent, because Bren was desperate enough to pick up dudes at her friend’s wedding. Maybe a rich lawyer? Alison, however, knows that phone numbers don’t have letters in them1 and googles it but doesn’t come up with anything. Vincent starts giving her a very threatening neckrub and then declares that he ordered dinner from “your favorite restaurant,” which is a normal thing to say to someone whose favorite restaurant you definitely know. “The place, with the food you like. You know the one,” says the doting husband to his new bride. Alison and Vincent head out to pick up some food from the good food place, and Jake takes the opportunity to pick the newly installed lock on Vincent’s filing cabinet. He finds the fishy life insurance policy but has to cram it all back in the drawer when Vincent runs back in to grab the wallet he forgot. He and Jake glower at each other in a very manly fashion, even though they both wear those necklaces everyone in California is apparently wearing all the time. You can be manly and wear a long leather necklace. It’s fine.
Vincent does something fishy to some pills, and then the four non-comatose, living characters in this movie settle down to dinner. Those pills turn out to be Jake’s diabetes medicine, and when he takes one, he immediately gets real fuzzy and loopy. He accuses Vincent of messing with his pills and asks Alison if she knows about the life insurance policies has on her. Alison acts like it’s the bigger violation that Jake went through Vincent’s locked cabinet. Grow up, Alison!! Jake, who is acting “drugged” like he has only read about drugs in newspapers from the 1890s, declares that we should all go look in the cabinet, if Vincent doesn’t have anything to hide. They abandon their food from Alison’s Favorite Restaurant to look at a sheaf of papers declaring that actually, this is an insurance policy on Vincent naming Alison the beneficiary. Jake was simply too drug-addled to read, a common side effect of, let’s say, laudanum. Jake protests that those are new papers, those aren’t the ones he saw, but Vincent points out that they were notarized by one Leland O’Connor, did he sneak some guy named Leland in here? There’s Lelands all over these parts, you know. Alison tells Jake he has to leave, and apologizes to Vincent for the trouble. Oh, no trouble, Vincent assures her, as he very obviously plants drugs in Jake’s bag and then “finds” them. Oh no! I bet Jake is back on the drugs! It’s the only explanation!
Meanwhile, Jake, back on the drugs, is driving Nicky around while ranting about Vincent. Nicky agrees that he’s extremely sketchy but please pull over before you crash the dang car, Jake, and then he crashes the dang car. He gets arrested for driving high, and Alison picks up her daughter and tells her she understands Jake is going through some things but she can’t see him until he works them out. The last thing a relapsing addict needs is support and resolve from their loved ones.
I guess Jake posted bail, or maybe they (hell yeah) don’t have cash bail in this movie, because the next time we see him he’s brooding in his apartment. He knows he knows Vincent from somewhere, but where? Jake pulls out a box of photos, like we all have in the 2020s, and flips through it until he finds a real #DudesRock photo of Vincent with some other dude. He calls up the other dude in the photo. It’s his dad! His small-time crook dad. Jake’s dad is working in a wood shop or something, and seems pretty pleased to hear from his kid. That’s nice. Jake asks about that guy? from prison? the one with the chain? This apparently narrows it down enough for Jake’s dad, who muses that he had “one of those guy/girl names, Stacey or, Jordan! Jordan Wilde.” One of those guy/girl names, like Brick. Jake’s dad warns him against getting mixed up with this Jordan character, but it’s too late for that, Jake’s dad! Jake does a quick fake-google and yeah this Jordan Wilde guy, he’s pretty bad, theft, attempted murder (pushing his girlfriend off a cliff, you remember), and the like.
While Vincent is being found out as a bad guy named Jordan, he’s serenely snuggling his wife. He tells Alison he’d like to take her on a little trip, a slightly delayed honeymoon. “Somewhere high and quiet,” he says, which is, well, not her first clue that something’s wrong here, but it is definitely a clue. Alison thinks that a trip to a rickety bridge across a remote, gaping ravine sounds lovely, and hops in the shower. Unfortunately, Jake texts her a warning about Vincent while she’s in there, and Vincent (we’re gonna keep calling him Vincent) sees the text. He grabs the phone and tells Alison that ope, something came up at work, and he’s gotta take care of it. “Seems like this is always happening,” Alison muses. It sure does, Ali.
Vincent arrives at Jake’s apartment and kicks him square in the gut, taking him down. He recognized Jake right away, he’s a loser just like his dad. How old? is Jake? How long ago was this? Whatever, whatever, we’re almost done. Jake swears that he hasn’t told anyone else who Vincent really is, and what’s the plan anyway, just kill Alison and take the insurance money? Yeah, pretty much, thanks for joining the movie. Vincent texts Jake from Alison’s phone that “she” found the drugs, stay away from Nicky, and then replies to that text from Jake’s phone with basically a suicide note. He then grabs a bunch of painkillers, shoves them into a still-woozy Jake’s mouth, and sends Nicky the suicide note too. “You son of a bitch,” Jake says as he foams at the mouth, and then Vincent grabs a wee little knife and puts a passed-out Jake in his Mercedes. Nicky, meanwhile, gets the ominous message and heads to Jake’s apartment from the teen slumber party.
Alison is at home taking a bath, sure, why not, when she hears a story on the local news about a notary public who’s been dead in his apartment for months even though no one knew he was missing. It’s Leland O’Connor, back again, and Alison recognizes the name as the one on her insurance policy. Wow, good thing she had the local news on loud enough to hear in the bath, otherwise this movie would never end! Alison lets herself into Vincent’s Bluebeard-ass cabinet and finds the real insurance policies, barely hidden. “Now it makes sense,” she says. Yeah dude! It made sense an hour ago! It made sense when your husband died and your best friend was nearly murdered at your wedding! It made sense when a realtor showed up at your house and announced you were squatting! Jiminy christmas, Alison!
Vincent arrives home and narrates the remainder of his plan aloud, for the neighbors to hear. Basically, you see, he will make it look like Jake killed Alison and then himself, being unstable and on drugs and all. He drags Jake’s limp form out of the car and heads inside, and finally Alison realizes that her phone is gone, and that her husband is 100% going to murder her right now. She quickly gets back in the tub, where the water is surely cold by now, and invites Vincent in, ha ha, so sexy and fun. As he’s undressing, Nicky, who has arrived at Jake’s apartment and found him gone, calls Alison, and Vincent pretends to give Alison her phone back but drops it in the tub instead. So what! It’s a new phone! You can drop them shits in the tub no problem! Alison gives up the ruse and sprays hairspray in Vincent’s eyes, and he pulls his lil knife out and tells her his whole plan. He cannot stop telling people his whole plan, it’s like he’s in an episode of “Poirot.” They scuffle, and Alison ends up knocking Vincent into the tub and then dropping a hairdryer in it, electrocuting him. He’s dead! He’s dead now. We’re all very relieved. As Alison takes a moment, Nicky shows up in her bedroom, with Jake draped over her shoulders. It’s Jake! He’s alive! Alison apologizes to Jake because he was right the whole time, and Jake apologizes to Alison because he just threw up all over the dining room.
Oh, and guess what! Bren’s fine. Remember Bren? When they take Jake to the hospital (he’s fine too), they learn that she’s just hanging out, sipping water, flirting with her doctor. She’s fine! Her hair even looks good. Also, they’ve sold out of all their PB&A jars, the big box store wants to triple their order, and they don’t have to repay their biggest investor, because it was Vincent, and he’s a piece of shit and he’s dead! Hooray! Hooray all around!
For his part, Vincent is in jail, working on another hustle that clearly involves seducing a prison guard. I don’t get it, this dude isn’t hot at all?? I will never be swayed by a con artist. That is an Amelia promise. Please do not con me. This was too much movie! Holy smokes. It’s over now. You’re safe. Thanks for reading, see you next time!
Remember how in The Baby-Sitters Club they’d say their phone numbers were like KL5-4578? I think they did this in Trixie Belden too. Was this an East Coast thing? Or an old-timey thing? Baffling. I bet the new BSC editions have normal phone numbers in them. Please tell me if you know.