OK. At this point you're kind of thinking: I know he's probably not her real husband, but terrifying scam aside, is this actually kind of hot? I wish somebody would assure me they were never going to leave no matter what, you know?
Jennifer wakes up to the perfect hubby showing her photos from their wedding. "You don't remember me, do you?" he asks, lifting the refrain from Hot Chocolate's 'It Started With a Kiss' word-for-word. She's definitely got amnesia, otherwise she'd be laughing her head off.
As he takes Jennifer back to his sparsely-decorated rustic mansion in the woods, Russell's many red flags soon begin to flutter. So too do the suspicions that this movie may have been written entirely by some kind of AI screenwriting algorithm.
No disrespect to 'Peter Sullivan', the credited writer and director (whose previous movie credits include the promisingly-titled The Dog Who Saved Halloween), but I think it's obvious that a computer actually wrote this movie based on the viewing data of millions of Netflix users.
This algorithm is getting pretty good. It knows we're all looking at our phones the whole time, for example, so when Jennifer finds a pivotal clue on Russell's computer she has to say "what is that, that's weird" out loud, like a video game prompt, even though she's alone in the room.
It's come up with a plot so inanely predictable that it's almost unpredictable. When was the last time you saw a thriller so completely free of twists?
If this is the future of entertainment then I kind of love it. Not because it's good, but because it absolves me of my own bad taste.
Why'd I give up on the critically-acclaimed Philomena halfway through, but sit glued to Secret Obsession's stupid storyline from start to finish?
Maybe it's not my fault. Can't help it, I'm a slave to the algorithm.
Secret Obsession (Netflix)
