Sexe, mensonges et Vampires

"Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?" delivers plenty of suspense and melodrama, but it's a mixed bag. Tori Spelling and Ivan Sergei give memorable performances, and the film builds an eerie atmosphere that keeps viewers on edge. However, the plot can feel predictable, and some scenes are unintentionally over-the-top, making it hard to fully invest in the characters' plight. With big budget movies, you expect more. Despite its flaws, it has undeniable '90s cult appeal, providing a nostalgic watch for fans of TV thrillers. While not groundbreaking, it's an entertaining guilty pleasure with enough tension to keep audiences watching.

As a Lifetime movie, not least of which a (in title only, as I'm told) remake of a "classic" 90's Lifetime movie also starring Tori Spelling, this brings the camp but only in small doses. If you also go into it expecting that James Franco directed it you'll be sadly mistaken - he wrote the "Television Story" though not the script, is an exec producer along with original star Spelling who appears here too and has an extended cameo as the director of the Macbeth in the movie - and of all things I now wish that Franco had directed it.

Maybe he knew this material was beneath him in some way, despite wanting to dip his toes into the world of teenage seduction and violence and other nefarious things (just as he dipped his toes ever so much like a spaz in General Hospital). What he gives us here is not some story of an abusive relationship, at least not at the core. It starts with a young woman, Pearl, being turned into a vampire and killing her maker, though she is now joined with three other goth-vampire ladies looking like rejects from The Craft (a movie this wishes it could be by the way).

Then cut to five years later (for... reasons?) and Leila George (Leah) is a college student who loves the first Twilight book (but not those awful sequels, heavens no!) and tries out and gets the lead as Macbeth (because #Feminism). She meets Pearl - a photographer who "lives her life in the lab" - and the two fall in love... but then the vampire stuff comes to life - will she or won't she turn her new love - and things unravel from there. And story wise it's not so much a question from daughter to mother as it is a "Mom, get out of my life, I'm Lesbians with this girl! Sheesh, didn't you see the hashtag with feminism?" But mother knows best, right? There's a lot of weak story stuff here, and the worst part is that the director - who at first until I looked up the info I was sure was Franco under a pseudonym, but alas Aitkenhead has other credits - things she's making something cutting edge and spiky.

I wish the movie had gone further into the camp or into the subplot of the film which shows that the three main vampire chicks go to frat parties and take out douches who try and date rape girls. How cool does that sound, especially as a hardcore, bloody, no-holds-barred exploitation flick (or sexploitation for that matter)? Instead we get this half-assed treatise about being queer, and it's not at all subtle about it. There's a college professor who pops up from time to time (and I'm certain it was meant for Nicholas Brendon, aka Xander from Buffy, as this is discount Nicholas Brendon incarnate), and spells out the themes as they happen. Actually one of the good moments with aforementioned vampire attack at a party is mucked up by narration about being gay and this lifestyle being reflected somehow in the, uh, supernatural, and it feels hollow and false if it's trying to be something real, and hokey if it's trying to be over the top.

Mostly, tonally, this is pretty flat, though it has some moments of camp (in part due to, I'm sure also no accident, a much younger/less talented James Franco clone in Nick Eversman's Bob with his howlingly funny facial tics), and a game Spelling as the mother. But by the end, for all of the blood (or was that grape jelly at a few points) and sex (surprisingly lots of skin for as TV-14), I wanted it to stop, and even at this the movie couldn't get itself straightened out as the final five-seven minutes are a mess. As far as major Hollywood people coming into the airy, dopey but in its own bizarre way integral Lifetime movie world, I say skip this and seek out last year's intentional homage/spoof A Deadly Adoption with Will Ferrell and Kirsten Wiig.

If you feel like cringe, irritation, laughable scenes, a movie to watch because it is so bad ? Look no further. This is your movie !! Super annoying. You'll have a blast.

I'm sure the executives at Lifetime were proud of themselves when they green-lit the remake of "Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?" "We're letting everyone know we're in on the joke! How cool are we right now?" one of them might have crowed. "And we got James Franco!" another one probably squealed. "Tori and Ivan are also on board, but of course they would be, amiright?" I'll admit I was kind of looking forward to this, too, but there were a few things that made me apprehensive, starting with the the discovery that our heroine would be in the clutches of a lesbian vampire, not a dangerously possessive boyfriend. (Christ, does *everything* have to be about vampires and zombies now?) But what really had me wary was that 2016's "Mother, May I Sleep with Danger?" was, unlike the original, going to be intentionally campy.

I thought the campiness the 1996 original was largely overstated (Lifetime's "Drew Peterson: Untouchable" delivered far more camp thrills for my basic cable dollar). That said, the original "Mother, May I...?" is still a hoot, and it's fun because everyone involved was so earnest. For me, it's that lack of self-awareness that's essential for elevating a movie or TV show from a mere fiasco to a camp classic. When "Valley of the Dolls" was brought to the big screen, the studio thought they were making a hard hitting drama. "Mommie Dearest" was supposed to be Oscar bait. "The Swarm" was meant to be the ultimate disaster movie, instead of just a disaster. But the remake/re- imagining of "Mother, May I...?" is *trying* to be campy from the get-go, and the result is predictably underwhelming.

Most underwhelming of all is James Franco. If ever there's an actor working today who's worthy of being called the New Nicolas Cage, it's Franco, who can deliver Oscar-caliber performances ("127 Hours") and then go bats--t crazy ("Spring Breakers") without breaking a sweat. But like Cage, Franco doesn't always go nuts when we need him to. Just as Cage phoned it in on "Left Behind," Franco, as a director of a college production of "Macbeth," is literally sitting on the sidelines in "Mother, May I...?", doing little more than offering a few winking asides to the TV audience. Tori Spelling, cast as the mother this time out, does what she can to make lightning strike twice, but most of the camp value she brings to the screen has less to do with her performance--which is OK--and more to do with her being Tori Spelling, Reality Show Joke/Tabloid Punching Bag. Ivan Sergei, whose performance as the psycho boyfriend in the original was so much fun, is cast in the more subdued role of a college literature professor.

It should be noted that "Mother, May I...?" is technically proficient, with better acting (notably Leila George, who's sleeping with danger, and Emily Meade, the danger with whom she's sleeping) and better direction by Melanie Aitkenhead (not James Franco, as was reported at one time), than the original. However, the script, by Amber Coney from "the twisted mind of" James Franco, is ho-hum, Franco's mind not nearly twisted enough. At the end of the day, the movie plays like a bland episode of "American Horror Story," with all the gratuitous nudity, over-the-top performances, and bitchy lines that make *that* show fun cut out.

James Franco and Tori Spelling are barely in this and definitely shouldn't be on the poster/box, Emily Meade should! This movie is mostly lesbian lifetime style boredom and barely horror at all, the coolest part is when a girl is covered in blood otherwise this movie is a bologna sandwich gone wrong!