Michael's Movie Grade: C+
Review: An effective suspense thriller, but not a great one.
What works about this movie is the main protagonist and antagonist as well as the suspense scenes. Our protagonist is a very likable character and one that we can fully relate to and care about. On the other hand our antagonist is quite scary and effective. With these two pluses fully set in place it is no wonder the suspense scenes work as well as they do. These suspense scenes are easily the highlight of the film. They are well shot and excellently paced. Most of all though these scenes do keep you on the edge of your seat. All this is helped out hugely by great performances from Stephan Bishop and Anne Ilonzeh, who make these characters feel so real to us.
Unfortunately though a major fault with this movie is that these two characters are the only ones who seem real. None of the other characters are ever fully fleshed out and just feel like characters we have seen in previous movies. This is especially problematic as our protagonist finds a new lover. This character is very awkwardly written and is given much corny and forced dialogue. You can see Taye Diggs is trying his hardest to make the character work, but unfortunately he is not able to pull it off. This sadly makes a major plot point come off as unbelievable which really hurts the movie. He is not the only character given forced dialogue, but he is given more than any other character. Even the best characters though occasionally have this kind of dialogue and sometimes it is sad with how well written our two main characters can be at times.
Despite these faults this movie does what it is supposed to, and does that pretty well. The suspense and two main characters are fantastic, and the movie has an important message about domestic abuse. However this will not go down as a great suspense movie, even if it is still a quite enjoyable movie.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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