Main cast: Kristin Davis (Mary Morrison), Dermot Mulroney (Tom Morrison), Greer Grammer (Grace), and Shanola Hampton (Elaine)
Director: Anna Elizabeth James
Deadly Illusions is billed as an erotic thriller, but the closest it has when it comes to titillation is a girl on girl kiss and Dermot Mulroney valiantly trying to save the show by taking off everything and having a shower with his rump bared to make the world a better place. That could be a body double’s butt, yes, but still, it’s a nice butt, so there’s at least one excuse to watch this thing.
The movie itself is a pretty standard “crazy woman threatening to destroy the lives of a married couple” that has been done to death already.
Kate Morrison is, of course, an author with a major writer’s block, while her husband Tom is a real estate guy. Their marriage is on the rocks because he has lost a lot of money in some recent ventures, forcing her to write another book for a much-needed two million dollar advance when she’d rather spend time with the kids and all.
Because she now has to focus on writing that book, she agrees with her friend Elaine’s suggestion to hire a nanny to care for the two brats while she works. That’s now Grace comes into their lives, and predictably enough, she’s cray cray.
This movie follows the formula pretty faithfully, with some mild deviations being the crazy nanny focusing her seduction more on Mary instead of Tom, Tom being the one sexually objectified here for the viewers’ entertainment, and a pretty tepid still perhaps much-needed twist ending.
Director Anna Elizabeth James also wrote the screenplay, so she’s the only that should be blamed for the ridiculous amount of really bad lines here.
“You’ve been a terrible boy, Tom, and it’s time for you to pay!”
Oh god, I am physically cringing at that line.
“I am completely insane! And I always get what I want!”
Oh god.
Most of the bad lines aren’t over the top awful, but they are such clichés that could have been lifted from any other Lifetime movie of a similar “psycho on the loose in our house” theme. As a result, this movie feels like a bad pastiche of those other movies, with very little to distinguish it from those formulaic pap aside from this being on Netflix instead of Lifetime. Even the set pieces and lighting and cinematography are similar to those in those shows, making this one feel like a generic and forgettable work.
Well, maybe that butt isn’t that forgettable, but I digress.
Greer Grammer is also tad wooden to give a convincing performance as a cray cray, while Dermot Mulroney tends to swing from underacting to overacting that his character feels more like a cartoon butt than anything else. Compared to them, Kristin Davis actually puts on a better performance as a woman that may or may not be slowly going crazy herself, but she can’t emote much either, and I wonder if it’s because of all the fillers she has clearly injected into her face.
All in all, this is a boring, forgettable movie that is saved by the butt. Even then, there are nicer butts out there, so it’s not like one is lacking choices here.
