Main cast: Houston Stevenson (Daniel), Julia Blanchard (Alison), Felicity Mason (Diana), Sarah Wisser (Rhiannon), Jackson Dockery (Carson), Brayson Goss (Kevin), David Davino (Ted), and Brayson Cade Goss (Kevin)
Director: Colin Theys
Alison is everything one can expect from a Lifetime movie heroine. No, really, let’s tick the items off the list now: stepfather, younger brother bullied by his peers, a jock boyfriend that tends to take her for granted, and her more “outgoing” (wink, wink) best friend.
Her boyfriend Carson is also the son of the richest and most powerfully connected family in town, so when the movie opens, she and her brother are invited to a party at the Silver Sands boat club. As usual, Kevin gets bullied, but this time the bullies’ tricks nearly turn fatal when he ends up in the waters with a shark nearby. Alison runs out to save him, but things look dire until the hunky, dashing Daniel jumps in to drive the shark away.
Thus a lovely relationship is formed… at least in Daniel’s head. Yes, he’s the mandatory psycho in this movie.
A Predator’s Obsession was originally called Stalker’s Prey 2, but these days Lifetime operate like a mainstay romance publisher in that every title should be made up of buzzwords like “psycho”, “predator”, “wrong”, “husband”, etc. Hence, the current title. I looked up the first installment after watching this thing, and what I found on IMDB helps to add some extra information that helps make more sense of this one.
Daniel is actually Bruce Kane, the same psycho in Stalker’s Prey. He’s the son of some wealthy family, which explains how he can afford that expensive car and his own posh place here despite working as a lowly staff member at the boat club. He’s obsessed over his dead girlfriend, also named Alison—she tried to break up with him while he was driving, and he started raging and going wooo-haaaahhh until oops, car accident and the lucky girl is dead. He stalked another young lady in that movie in a plot that mirrors the one here, and in this one, he believes our heroine is, well, his second chance at making things right with his true love because the two young ladies have the same name.
Daniel somehow charms his way into staying at her parents’ place, supposedly for a short time, and as you can guess, he starts to plot to remove everyone that is in the way between him and his “wife”. No, really, he actually calls Alison that in his often amusing episodes of talking out loud of his plans to himself. Carson has to go, of course. Alison’s stepfather Ted also has to go, because Daniel intends to make Kevin his little brother and he’d be the father figure the little kid needs. And so forth.
The intended gimmick of this series is that Daniel has an affinity for sharks, which means that there are some fake-looking shark CGI in this one as he feeds some of his victims to it. Aside from that, this one is a formulaic, by the numbers Lifetime “the psycho that wants me” movie. Stupid people meeting someone alone, despite not fully knowing whom they are meeting, and get killed when the person they meet turns out to be, shocker, Daniel. The lead character being hilariously oblivious to even the biggest red flags about the psycho until it’s too late. The characters are all stock archetypes, so they talk and behave like their counterparts in every other similar Lifetime movie.
Oh, and don’t forget how everything can be found on the Internet at the right time, as Daniel gets Alison’s address from looking up “Searchbot”, and when Alison finally decides that something is off with Daniel way late in the movie and searches “Bruce Cane”, the fellow’s shady past is revealed in the first two search results. If real life is a Lifetime movie, we’d finally have world peace for all by searching on the Internet ways to achieve it.
The level of acting in this one is pretty abysmal, especially from the guy that plays Carson. The older cast members are generally okay, although they still have this “reading out loud from the teleprompter” vibe to their performance.
Surprisingly, as my expectations aren’t high in the first place, Houston Stevenson is a hoot to watch. He has some hilarious villainous lines to deliver, and he does it with such relish that he seems to be the only one of the cast that knows how bad the script is and he’s rolling along to let everyone know he’s in on the whole thing and he’s having a great time doing so. Unlike some actors cast to play the “hot” psycho, Mr Stevenson is cute enough to be believable as that charming psycho, so that helps too. He reminds me of a young Warren Kole, who is one of my favorites when it comes to playing sexy psycho dudes.
It probably says something about this movie that the smartest and most likable character is the psycho, although I’m not whether that something is what the people behind this show is hoping for. The adorable nutjob has me giving this one an extra oogie because, really, that guy makes this movie far more fun to watch than it otherwise would be. I’m actually intrigued to learn that there is a sequel, with Daniel once again terrorizing another young lady.
Still, if you don’t have a thing for cute psycho dudes and you don’t intend to get drunk enough to somehow enjoy the horrible acting, there won’t be much in A Predator’s Obsession worth watching for.
