Inconceivable

"Deadly Ex" was a disappointment despite Christine Conradt's presence on the writing credits — she worked out the original story in collaboration with Chris Lancey and did the actual script by herself. The first surprise came when I looked up the film's IMDb.com page and read the following synopsis: "A woman interprets a kiss at a high school reunion as an invitation to follow her ex across the country and supplant his current family." That was a surprise because I would have assumed a Lifetime movie called "Deadly Ex" would have been about a woman terrorized by a male ex-lover, not the other way around! The "deadly ex" is Valerie (Natasha Henstridge), who 20 years before dated Gary (Jason Gerhardt) when they were both high-school students in Kansas City and he had ambitions to go to law school and become a prosecutor. Only within a year and a half they broke up and Gary married Jess (Marguerite Moreau). He dropped out of law school after two years and ended up in Los Angeles starting a trucking company with his friend Walt (Ben Reed). Alas, the business is barely hanging on financially, and Jess's job as a yoga teacher doesn't add that much to the family income. They have two kids, teenage son Zach (Matt Cornett) — who like virtually all movie teenagers spends his entire life wearing headphones and listening to loud music, and who wears a long-sleeved T-shirt bearing the logo of a business called "Burger Records" (we see him in that shirt in virtually every scene, so much so that we get the impression it's the only shirt he owns!) — and a daughter, Carissa (Sammi Hanratty) — not another Carissa! — whom the family wants to send to a fiercely competitive prep school and they have a slot to admit her but they need to come up with the tuition.

Valerie is actually doing considerably better economically — she lives and works in Seattle and has come up with a successful business selling high-end purses, handbags and cases for tablet computers — but though Christine Conradt doesn't spell out what her emotional life has been like, we get the impression that if she has had a sex life since she and Gary broke up, it's been pretty loveless, opportunistic and not "serious." The script intercuts between present action and whatever it was happened between Gary and Valerie at the high-school reunion at which they re-met — we see her cruising him, him confessing to her that his marriage is in trouble and he and Jess are considering a divorce, and the two getting as far as an open-mouthed kiss and Valerie inviting Gary back to her hotel room, an invitation Gary virtuously declined but came close enough to accepting Valerie thinks it's only a matter of time before she can wear him down and get him to leave his wife and kids for her. The script shows the "Conradt touch" in making the three principals multidimensional characters, though I agree with the previous reviewer who complained that Gary is such a milquetoast it's hard to believe both women are so invested in him they're fighting this bitterly over him. Natasha Henstridge is so much sexier than Marguerite Moreau one gets the impression that Gary traded down big-time when he left Valerie for Jess — she's also a much better businessperson than Gary or his wife — and Jess (giving her such an androgynous name was a nice touch on Conradt's part) doesn't help her cause by being ferociously and counterproductively jealous, constantly ragging Gary about his association with Valerie, finding lipstick on one of his shirts (which Gary had hidden precisely to avoid his wife having a jealous hissy-fit about it), refusing to believe that he and Valerie never actually got to the down-'n'-dirty in the 2.0 phase of their relationship, and peremptorily throwing him out of the house without giving him much of a chance to explain.

Valerie is easily the show's most interesting character — like Jett Rink, James Dean's character in the film "Giant," we get the idea that there are more sides of her that we'd want to see explored and we'd like to see the story "remixed" to focus on her and how she made it in the business world even as she failed to find romance or happiness in that department — and though she's considerably more zaftig than the common type of female leads today, I doubt very many straight guys watching this movie would pick Jess over her! Unfortunately, this film also shows Christine Conradt's weaknesses as a writer big-time, particularly her penchant for insanely melodramatic climaxes. "Deadly Ex" was originally filmed under the title "Inconceivable" — for once Lifetime changed a working title and came up with something better, though not by much — and it's given workmanlike direction by Tom Shell, who seemed to be holding his nose and jumping into the pool of melodramatic gimmicks Conradt supplied him in lieu of a script. But it does have an excellent performance by Natasha Henstridge, who burns up the screen for sheer sexiness and manages to make Valerie believable as a put-upon victim — at least until the final scene, when Conradt's script requires her to lose it completely and she responds with the kind of over-several-tops acting Christine Conradt's scripts seem to demand at their melodramatic worst!

I thought the female lead was pretty good and evil. Most everybody else in this movie sucked. The story line was typical LMN nonsense. Making the women strong and the male lead a wimp. The hubby just had no balls in this monstrosity of a movie. He keeps going around saying he's sorry but does nothing to show how much. And the pay off, after all the damage the vixen had done to his family and he has to move out, he lets her in his hotel bedroom to talk. Yeah, that's right. A stupid man and he constantly had me yelling at him calling him such a fool.

I won't reveal the ending, much to my dislike, but when all is done and police arrive, he stands there in his usual lost and dazed look while his family is barely surviving. You'd think he'd at least run up to see how they are as soon as he could. But no, this jerk stands there feeling sorry for himself, the only one not harmed at all.

The son and daughter were okay and wifey was fair, but the female vixen stole the movie in my mind. Only one that seemed to have any focus at all.

Please don't waste your time with this Utter rubbish. I'm embarrassed that I watched the whole of the movie. Another absolutely crap movie with dreadful acting. Don't waste your time.

Was an ok movie up until the last scene. The director screwed the entire movie up by turning it into a comedy! My gawd! A 10 year old could have directed a scene better!!!

Character Development/Writing Quality: This is a strong script in many ways. The pacing follows a consistent rhythm with unnerving actions taken by the obsessed ex-girlfriend Valerie (Natasha Henstridge) from high school. She's bold behind the scenes, the steps she takes to win back Gary after 20 years subtle at first, then rising into an intense crescendo when she realizes that he is devoted to his wife and family. Though some of what she does is predictable (think Fatal Attraction and Obsessed), the ending presents a bit of a startling surprise.

Values: Strong family values. Gary and Jess are on the brink of a possible divorce due to financial stress, but they both are committed to doing what it takes to stay together. Their two teen children are played credibly as they fight to protect their family unit. The dynamic between the parents and children and between the married couple is played out very realistically and invite empathy from the audience.

Content (sex, language & violence): No sex (suggestive nudity from a picture of the villain), minimal language, strong violence at the end, an intimate tackle between the wife and villain in particular.

Scare Factor/Suspense: Suspense focuses on the audience's concern about the next tactic Valerie will pull. In the final moments of the film, the scare factor is heightened as the family's life is put in danger. This is a well done film with a viable story line, a captivating psycho, and an endearing family that you root for.