Paradise Cove

Plot

A contractor and his wife move to Malibu to flip his mother's beach house and are terrorized by the deranged homeless lady living under the house.

Cast

The consistently weak Mena Suvari stars alongside Kristin "True Blood" Bauer who deserves better than this.

Verdict

This was a film I was entirely unaware of until it popped up on the entertainment list on a flight I was in. Seeing Bauer and being more than slightly tired I decided to give it a try and saying I was underwhelmed is an understatement.

Let me be clear, Paradise Cove isn't a bad movie it's just more like a Lifetime Original movie than a horror film. In fact the more I think about that the more accurate the statement becomes.

Couple are tormented by this crazy mind game playing lady and it never really feels like it's going anywhere and that's probably because it doesn't at all. It plods along, characters behave in rather unbelievable ways, Bauer outshines everyone, Suvari is just dreadful and it builds to a predictable finale that quite frankly makes me wonder if the whole thing was AI made because if an AI wrote a movie it would look something like this. What I mean by that is it's ripped from other movies and is absolutely soullless.

Paradise Cove is a mediocre throw away and forget about movie, nothing more.

Rants

This is one of those realistic horrors but in trying to be it ironically becomes unrealistic because of how characters behave in the movie and they have to in order for the movie to keep going. Characters behave bafflingly, characters allow things to them and then just get on with it in unbelievable fashions which just makes our "Heroes" look week. If people behaved rationally these movies wouldn't be able to exist, that's perhaps something the industry should try to counter.

The Good

Kristin Bauer Not the worst premise

The Bad

Weak leads Entirely predictable That one senseless death trope that I'm absolutely SICK of.

I had high hopes for this movie. I popped the popcorn anticipating a suspenseful movie. Well it unfortunately didn't turn out as I had hoped. It started off pretty good and then died towards the middle. This character Bree in the movie turned out to be very psychotic. Kristen Bauer did do an excellent job of portraying a crazy lady in this film.The other actors did a great job in their roles but the story could have been better. The story would have been better if Bree had made Tracey the wife more jealous. There were extra characters in the movie that weighed it down. It is not the worse movie I ever saw even though I found myself wishing it would hurry up and end.

This was such a chore to finish. Rather than scrutinize the story, I'll just touch on what I find incomprehensible...

1. THE SQUATTER: Why does everyone in the movie insist that this old hairy homeless hippie woman is somehow "hawt"? The wife is jealous for some dumb reason, the contractors all lust after her, her fellow homeless friends call her "queen", and the husband fantasizes about her and even lets her tug his chub in one scene...

...When realistically, being homeless for as long as she's been, she'd be rocking a 1970s merkin-style, crab infested bush, with yeasty vaginosis smelling like rank vinegar and expired milk, sporting armpit and leg hair that hadn't had a shave in years, with perpetually un-wiped swamp@ss, and the funk of never using makeup, perfumes, or soap to try and mask her moldy musk.

...And just to clarify, this is not a commentary on the actress - at all - I am strictly talking within the context of the story in the film. There would be an ungodly stench that permeated around her like a bubble-- a fart bubble everywhere she went and had been. It is inconceivable that these characters would be collectively lusting for her crust, or the women envious of her dog matted looks, or the denizens of the town be so reverent to her existence.

2. WHERE THE SQUATTER SQUATS: She lives directly under their house. They know this, we know this, every character in the movie knows this. The entire plot/conflict of the movie revolves around the fact that this couple can't seem to rid themselves of this person living under their house... However...

...Right after CATCHING HER burning all of their money on a grill, the movie cuts to the couple knocking on their neighbor's door with the Sheriff asking for her whereabouts. WHAT?! She lives under their house. The husband literally had to push her away when she was burning their cash. The movie even cuts back to her under their house as usual about to murder yet another guy.

...But then, with no further clues as to where on earth she could possibly be, the sheriff departs, and the bewildered couple give up. If only they had thought to look under the house.

3. PERPLEXING SQUAT like the couple's insistence on doing fertility treatments during the 2 weeks of renovations, or insisting on taking on a renovation project during their month of fertility treatments...

...And Bree's ability to murder in broad daylight right under their house to no one's notice, and the conveniently built ventilation duct she uses to get in and out that they literally installed themselves, and the sloppy editing at the end of the movie like the filmmakers were just ready for this clusterchuck to be over already and had the characters fast-travel from one place to the next with no sense of how.

4. THEN DIDDLY SQUAT: no resolution in the end regarding any of the many murders, the sheriff, the uppity neighbors, or where the couple goes on from here, nothing. It just abruptly cuts to credits...

...Oh but wait, there's an after credits scene? (FYI, I explain it in the "Crazy Credits" section if anybody is curious and had missed it).

Yeah this was dumb.

I probably should of watched the trailer before I put this on. I liked the concept but this movie sucked. Some of the acting and cinematography were terrible. I wouldn't recommend watching this film. 4 stars.

Although it's a complete rip off and of the Keaton thriller it does have a couple redeeming qualities, one being Kristin Straten. Watchable but forgettable.