Ein tödliches Versprechen

Saw this movie on Amazon Prime since I am a fan of Wes Bentley and recognize Jaimie Alexander from the Thor movies. In terms of the premise it is very simple. Jaimie Alexander plays Tara who is engaged to be married to Michael. While out with her friends for a bachelorette party they let loose and have fun. Tara meets a bartender at a club named Patrick, and they end up sleeping together. After that moment Patrick ends up developing an obsession with Tara and once she makes it clear that it was simply a one-night stand that is when things start escalating.

Like other stalker movies he gets more involved in her life and looks for ways to sabotage it. In terms of acting it was not great with the exception being Wes Bentley. He does crazy very well (see a similar movie called P2 where he absolutely tormented Rachel Nichol's character in a parking lot). I would go so far as to say that he carries this movie because the rest of the cast was mediocre to poor. Even Jaimie Alexander was fairly bland and only stood out because of her beauty. I have seen her in Thor and a few episodes of the TV series Blindspot, so I know that she is capable of putting in a good performance. Her friends and sister (Emily) were terrible and cringy.

I do not regret watching this film and have seen much worse; however, in terms of the obsessive stalker-type movies it has been done better elsewhere. As a matter of fact, Wes Bentley's own P2 (2007) was very well done on what looks like a smaller budget with fewer cast members and confined primarily to one location (an underground parking lot). Give P2 a watch instead; however if you absolutely must watch this then see it for Wes Bentley and only watch it once. 5/10 due to Wes.

I sometimes watch bad stalker movies. I find their predictability, bad acting and uninspiring dialogue somehow entertaining on a rainy day.

But this was bad-bad. Who green lit this? Who wrote this and why did they want to punish us?!

Tara Bloom (Jamie Alexander) goes on her bachelorette party weekend in New Orleans. She is seduced by dark, mysterious bartender Patrick (Wes Bentley). She leaves after a night of passion back to her fiancé Michael (Cam Gigandet) in California. Patrick is obsessed and flies out to stalk her. Her friend Debra (Alexandra Breckenridge) tries to help.

This is supposed to be a thriller. The problem is the horrible boring production. There is no tension to speak of. The filming is done as blandly as possible. It is dull and slow. There are no surprises. There is nothing compelling. It should be dark but it's more cheese than noir. The acting is functional. Cam is more comfortable playing a douche. His face-off with Wes becomes a douche-off. Tara is not that great to root for either. This is not really a threatrical thriller.

All a bit daft, but harmless enough entertainment if nothing else better to do.

Would appeal more to the girls than the boys

The setup for this movie is silly. An engaged girl, Tara, meets a bartender, Patrick, at a really stupid pseudo-sex-freak club shortly before her wedding. The awfulness hits right out of the gate. The director did a really bad job of portraying this weirdo freak club. I'm guessing the intent was to show something like what we see in Single White Female but instead it just looks like some idiots in bad clown makeup hanging out at a high end bar that was used during daytime hours to shoot this scene. Patrick is covered in tattoos and appears to be on the Gumby workout plan. He is obsessed with Tara literally from the second he lays eyes on her, he acts crazy from the get-go and he wears a ring on his index finger so we know for sure he's nuts. Even though Patrick acts bizarrely intense from the moment Tara first speaks to him, he seems to make her uncomfortable immediately, and she seems to have no doubts about getting married, Patrick is kind of hot so naturally she sleeps with him. Despite the fact that he acts like a straight up freak from minute one, Tara is shocked after waking up post-bow-chicka-bow-wow to find him acting like...well, a freak.

The acting isn't great but it could be worse considering how awful the movie is. The one exception being the girl who plays the sister-holy Toledo, she must be the director's sister or something. I hope her family didn't gather around to watch her in this because that would just be awkward for everyone. Wes Bentley is good as he always is and I commend him for being able to deliver anything in this dumpster fire of a movie. It's just a shame this is the kind of garbage he is doing now. Maybe he owed someone a favor. It is also disappointing that Alexandra Breckenridge is in this but doesn't have much to do. She is pretty good-too good for this, that's for sure. She probably should have played Tara instead of the other chick.

Lame camera work, obviously fake settings (the hospital scene is particularly hilarious), bad scene transitions, shots that last too long and laugh-out-loud camera angles involving a house elevator do not help matters. I'm guessing the director found this cool, unusual house to use for the movie, had a tent pole over the elevator and decided to use it to the fullest extent. Er, well, as far as a house elevator can be used in a movie that isn't actually about a house elevator. The other scene which stood out as being especially ridiculous was the scene where Tara and her friend meet up with a "private eye" after he looks into Patrick's background. They meet at some sort of Japanese temple to go over the findings, I assume because that is so much easier and more natural than heading over to Denny's. I actually felt bad for the director on this one. It's all kind of embarrassing at that point.

Anyway, all the typical crazy stalker shenanigans ensue. There's nothing new here at all, and there are some threads which wind up being pointless and lead to nothing. For example, the endless dossier or love letter or manifesto Patrick spends a bunch of time writing, which is apparently none of our business. So much is dedicated to him writing this stupid thing and then we do not get to read or hear or know a single thing he wrote in it. Lazy screenwriting, folks, that's what this is. The other part that goes nowhere is the introduction of the sister into the story. There is screen time dedicated to this which ends up being 100% pointless and fruitless in every way. It makes me wonder if there was more to that part but the girl playing the sister was such a horrendous actress that they cut it all out. But Patrick's note wasn't a bad actor and that went nowhere either, so again it appears this is just a bad script.

The one and only positive thing about the movie is the last few seconds of it. I didn't see that coming and thought it was pretty decent/funny/dreadful. Alas, twelve seconds at the end of a movie hardly makes the rest of it worthwhile.

Bottom line: this movie is only for major fans of the stalker movie genre or Wes Bentley and even then, I wouldn't bother with it unless you have watched every stalker and Bentley movie on earth already.