Film Review: 'Killer Cove'

Interior designer Linda Marshall (Haley Webb) has a lot on her plate. In addition, struggling to make a living working at a small beachside town's antique shop while looking for new work, Linda is being continuously hounded by her vindictive ex-husband Eric (Jason Alan Smith) to sell the house they previously lived in together for the price he needs. With so much going on in her life, Linda finds herself at her wit's end when she finds herself the victim of a stalker (Shawn Fitzgibbon).

With the police not making the headway she's hoping for, a desperate Linda goes to a private investigator for assistance: Tony Sorno (Donny Boaz), a man she met in a bar shortly before her stalker showed up in her life. After Tony successfully puts an end to the stalker's pursuit, Linda warily begins a romantic relationship with the charming and ruggedly handsome Tony—much to the encouragement of her friend/co-worker Carrie (Cathy Baron), and the chagrin of Eric. But when Eric becomes the victim of a set of attacks, and Linda learns more about Tony's troubling past, Linda finds herself wondering: is Tony her dream come true, or has she invited a psychopath into her already chaotic life?

With a premise soaked in dramatic potential, with the combination of Linda's relationship woes and struggles with a stalker, Killer Cove (also known under the title Fear Bay) had a lot going for it in terms of creativity and plot building. And with a beautiful setting of a beach side town, the film also had a lot of potential when it came to the visuals. But while Killer Cove does have a few twists up its sleeve, it namely sticks to the Lifetime-ian formula, and had an ultimate twist that many viewers are likely to see coming.

What makes the twist easy to predict is that Killer Cove's third act suffers from an overabundance of padding. While the first two acts do well in building intrigue around the men in Linda's life, and who exactly it is she can trust, the third drags things out too long, and builds up the presumed conclusion so heavily that it becomes obvious something else is going on--with the culprit being a fairly obvious choice.

WARNING: Spoilers Below

Going into the "twist" reveal that Eric was setting up Tony to look like a murderer to get him out of the way, I was recoiling out of the belief that he would have a generic "If I Can't Have You, No One Can" motivation that would go completely against the character he's built up as. But instead, his motivations prove to be completely out of greed and self-interest, and have a nice tie-in with his main conflict with Linda.

Despite my relief over a potentially film-breaking twist being avoided, I couldn't help but envision a stronger ending for the film: rather than having a twist ending, have it revealed that Tony is in fact a psychopath obsessed with Linda, with Eric appearing as a surprise hero rescuing Linda after genuinely trying to warn her to stay away from Tony to no avail. It not only would've made for a far more emotionally impactful ending, but could've brought depth to what is otherwise a standard "Evil/Jerkass Ex-Husband" archetype. As is, though, the climax (while formulaic) is an intense finale that does a bit to twist the formula around, with Linda deciding against staying with Tony after learning about his past of instability, and the film ending with the indication that Tony is in fact a killer, and is more fixated on Linda than he let on.

(Minor gripe: the scene where Tony attacks Linda in her kitchen as a means of inspiring her to "fight back" against the challenges in her life really could've been cut. Not only was it a cheap fake-out that makes Tony more of an obvious red herring, but the fact that the level-headed Linda accepts this explanation and rewards him for assaulting her with a kiss was especially grating).

Spoilers Over

Killer Cove's strong cast makes up for the plot's weaker aspects, with Haley Webb making for a sympathetic, but strong protagonist. She plays well off both Donny Boaz, and Jason Alan Smith, but her strongest chemistry is definitely with Cathy Baron, as the friendship between Linda and Carrie strikes a particularly emotional chord, and allows Baron to develop Carrie into more than just a cardboard cutout "Heroine's BFF" character. Boaz strikes the balance between charming and vaguely menacing as Tony, and Smith is effectively slimy as the vindictive and snappish Eric. Owen Miller also appears as Detective Groves, playing well off of Boaz as Groves and Tony's shared animosity is gradually built up, and making for an effectively gruff, but well-intentioned detective.

While the plot and ultimate revelation could've used some fine tuning, Killer Cove is an otherwise solid enough Lifetime-ian thriller with a great cast, and well-constructed suspense and drama to keep an audience entertained. While it's not a movie that many will come back to often, it has a few memorable qualities, and will nonetheless make for a nice watch over a lazy weekend.

Score: 6 out of 10 abandoned canning factories.