daughterofolaf

I hate to say how disappointed I am with this season but I am. Season three seems to consistently be the point that Netflix screws up good shows and apparently Unsolved Mysteries is no exception (although I suppose it had some issues from the start).

Death in A Vegas Motel is hardly a huge mystery. To a layman watching the show, it seems 100% clear what happened and who did it based on the circumstances and evidence presented in the episode. The family and the authorities seem to know exactly what happened and who did it. The hooker clearly knows what happened and was likely directly involved.

It is very unfortunate that no one has been prosecuted in the case, and my heart goes out to this man's family for their loss and lack of justice for him. However, as sad and upsetting as that is, there seems to be very little that is truly unsolved here. Perhaps the only mystery is who physically killed this man--most likely a cronie for the man who was clearly responsible for organizing it. This is a story about a lack of justice, not a story about a mystery that is unsolved.

This entire story could have been told in less than half the time it took. The episode is unnecessarily bloated with redundant information, dragged out by revealing bits and pieces of the case trying to make it seem more mysterious than it is, and with extensive testimonials about how sad people are over the loss of this man. I get that these people are grieving but that does not a mystery make.

It is clear that the goal of the Netflix series is not truly to solve mysteries like the original series, but simply to produce more slick, high production value true crime stories. I am all for true crime shows and Netflix generally does them better than any, but this episode is a shining example of what is wrong with this particular show.

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.