Lifetime Review: 'Fatal Fiancé'

While she's spent much of her life traveling the world, food writer Leah Mitchell (Brittany Underwood) is finally ready to settle down after meeting the man of her dreams. Handsome and charming, Mark Pfeiffer (Greg Perrow) seems to be everything Leah could ask for. With her wedding day approaching, things should be like a fairytale for Leah. And they are...until Leah is suddenly attacked by an unknown woman, demanding she not marry Mark. After describing her assailant to her fiancé, Mark identifies the woman as Faith (Camila Banus), his ex-girlfriend who was institutionalized for psychiatric issues that cropped up during their relationship.

While Mark assures Leah she'll be safe, the day of her wedding sees Leah being kidnapped and held captive by a seemingly unhinged Faith. Mark quickly arrives and rescues Leah, but in the days that follow, Mark's behavior has Leah's mind racing. Is Faith truly just a crazy ex-girlfriend....or is there a dark side to Leah's fiancé that she doesn't know about?

Starting out, Fatal Fiancé (originally known under titles like A Deadly Bridenapping and A Bride's Nightmare) has a very atmospheric cold open. The haunting music coupled with a dark scene of a woman fruitlessly trying to hide from a man in a dark forest pulled me into the eerie scene. While it was bizarre that the scene cut the sound as the man goes in for the attack (making it seem as though the woman had little reaction to being caught), it still made for an attention-grabbing scene. But unfortunately, Fatal Fiancé quickly goes downhill from there. Not only is the aforementioned bizarre sound choice just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this film's heinous editing and soundtrack, but you'll also have to contend with the put-you-to-sleep pace at which this monotonous story is told.

But seeing how aggressively blatant they are, let's start by talking about the egregious editing choices and music. Shots often zoom in and out, scenes hastily cut away from each other, and there's some shaky-cam thrown into the mix. It's also been noted how there's an overabundance of establishing shots used throughout the film, with one depicting a turtle (makes as much sense with context as without) being absurdly random. While some of these effects could've been used to create tension or visual variety, it instead comes across as a mish-mash of edits that serve no purpose. Even worse is the music, with the appropriately subdued-but-atmospheric song that opens Fatal Fiancé being replaced with pop beats and dramatic chords that occasionally overpower the dialogue and don't know when to stop. It's like the movie realizes how dull and listless its story is and is aggressively pouring dramatic sound into your ears to trick you into thinking otherwise.

To the editing and music's credit, they do sometimes come together to make a few entertaining scenes. The scene in which Leah has her first encounter with Faith is hilarious in how chaotic it gets. But overall, the times when the editing makes things weird instead of fun are far more numerous. As for the story, in addition to being dull, it doesn't know how to keep itself engaging. Leah is released from Faith's captivity fairly quickly, and the rest of the movie becomes a tedious stall as we wait for Leah to uncover the truth about Mark. The action becomes so mundane and the story so dependent on moronic decisions that the brief moments of entertainment (intentional or otherwise) only provide a bit of relief.

Speaking of, the story behind Fatal Fiancé is a prime example of what TV Tropes calls an Idiot Plot. This was writer Genevieve Russell's first time writing a movie, and given the number of holes that can be found in her script, it shows. The story hinges on the primary players (Leah, Mark, and Faith) making unbelievably dumb decisions to happen, with each character receiving a particularly facepalm-inducing moment. Let's count them up:

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW

1. For a woman attempting to warn Leah that she's about to marry an abusive monster, Faith is pretty bad at doing so. In her first attempt, she seems to believe surprising Leah in her car and attacking her while screaming, "You can't marry him!", is a good approach. Then she resorts to drugging and tying Leah up in an isolated cabin, wielding a gun and snapping at her. You'd think she'd spend this time detailing her history with Mark and otherwise give evidence to counteract Mark's claims against her. But instead, Faith leaves Leah alone for much of her captivity and only gives brief rants about Mark's abuse--not bothering to explain that Brian (his original name when he dated Faith) and Mark are the same person, allowing Leah to believe Faith is just a delusional psychopath.

Much later on, though, is when Faith makes the incomprehensibly stupid decision to meet with Mark to try and threaten him into leaving Leah. Not only that, she even accepts the coffee he makes for her, having apparently dismissed the possibility that the abusive ex-boyfriend who tried to choke her to death would be willing to kill her to shut her up. It's only because of Mark's own ineptitude that she improbably survives his poisoning.

2. Mark definitely doesn't put "fatal" in Fatal Fiancé with how he utterly fails to kill Faith. Despite going on a whole villain monologue about how the poison concoction he put in her coffee would destroy her kidneys and kill her, this never happens and Faith is even able to escape the shed he locks her inside. And even after his off-screen attack, Faith still manages to escape and reach her doctor's office before passing out, with his last ditch effort to finish her off being stopped by a nurse. It makes for a nice subversion of expectations regarding the opening "kill" (I assumed the victim would be revealed to be some other unfortunate ex of Mark's), but it also makes for an annoying plot hole that makes Mark look rather incompetent for a character previously established as a calculated sociopath.

3. Leah manages to avoid going down the idiot route longer than her counterparts. Following her encounter with Faith, she recognizes the change in her fiancé and responds by looking into Faith's history to see how much of what she said was true. But in the climax, she suddenly gets hit with the stupid stick too by falling for Mark's paper-thin ploy of luring her into his clutches. Did Leah seriously believe a cop would suddenly call her and ask to meet at a "secure location" to talk about Mark rather than...you know...come to her himself or tell her to come to the police station? There had to be a less idiotic way to set up a final confrontation between Leah and Mark. At least we have Priya there to halfway call out how stupid this setup is.

Spoilers Over

For the most part, the cast is decent, doing all that they can with a tattered script full of poorly written characters. Brittany Underwood gives a solid lead performance as Leah and Camila Banus brings a similar energy to Faith that she brought to Tess Harper. Fellow Lifetime familiar face Casey O'Keefe appears as Leah's friend Priya, and apart from her weirdly nonchalant attitude with Leah in the immediate aftermath of her kidnapping, O'Keefe makes Priya a likable character and plays well off Underwood as the film goes on.

As the black sheep of the bunch, we have Greg Perrow as Mark. SPOILER ALERT Prior to Mark/Brian's official villainous reveal, Perrow works through some moments of stilted delivery to give Mark a sense of charm. It makes it easy to see why Leah, her friends, and even her parents are so taken by his false persona. But unlike most actors who play Lifetime villains, Perrow's performance is at its worst when Mark's true colors come out. While he does bring some malice to some of his darker moments with Faith, Perrow is otherwise either overly stiff or laughably over-the-top with Mark's evilness. This is most notable during his taste-testing meltdown and his final confrontation with Leah, where Perrow and his dialogue are noticeably wooden and Mark begins randomly repeating words like a malfunctioning robot. Unlike other actors who have played histrionic Lifetime villains, Perrow takes it too far into eyeroll-worthy territory, with his descents into stiffness only aggravating the problem. Spoilers Over

Between this movie and The Wrong Real Estate Agent, 2021 is not getting off to a good start when it comes to Lifetime premieres. While I did decide to give Fatal Fiancé half a point more than what I gave The Wrong Real Estate Agent, that's mostly because it at least gave us a few unintentional moments of humor that provide some fleeting salvation. Otherwise, this flop of a drama fails in many of the same ways as its predecessor: dim-witted protagonists, a badly written and acted antagonist, and a bland story told at a speed that could have you drifting off by the second act. Throw in all the disastrous editing, overwhelming music, and the abrupt ending and you've got a recipe for another dreadful Lifetime "thriller".

Score: 2.5 out of 10 dumpling dates.