Lifetime Review: 'The Wrong Real Estate Agent'

Julie Fields (Vivica A. Fox) couldn't have had better luck with her new home. A beautiful house being rented to her at a reduced price by her friend, fellow realtor Charles Milton (Andres Londono), Julie thinks it could be the start of a new beginning for her and her daughter Maddie (Alaya Lee Walton). But as she's trying to get adjusted to her new digs, strange things begin to disturb Julie. Unexplainable sounds around the house, belongings of hers going missing, and other happenings.

Despite assurances from handyman Connor (Tom Sandoval) that nothing is amiss with the attic as she believes, the bizarre events continue. What Julie doesn't realize is that she doesn't have an animal lurking around her house--it's an obsessed prowler intent on watching her every move and having her all to himself. This single mother's new start is about to take a grisly turn...

It's been two years since Vivica A. Fox--a fixture of David DeCoteau's "Wrong" series--has been the main protagonist of one of these movies. The last time was The Wrong Cruise, which coincidentally also had Andres Londono playing her co-star and the film's main villain. It's too bad that Fox's return to the main spotlight is for such a disaster of a movie. While The Wrong Cruise was an entertaining thrill ride, The Wrong Real Estate Agent is a stale stalker drama that's further mangled by its script and cast.

The acting is the most surprising thing that goes awry for The Wrong Real Estate Agent, as the cast is filled with people familiar to the franchise. Alongside Fox and Londono, there's Gina Hirazumi, Ciarra Carter, and Rib Hillis. All five of these actors have given fantastic performances in past "Wrong" offerings, with Londono making for an excellent villain in The Wrong Cruise. But here, a Revenge for Daddy-esque situation breaks out, with not a single cast member being spared from getting hit (to some degree) with what I've dubbed "Inexplicable Bad Acting Syndrome". Not that I can blame the actors for stumbling on the bits of clunky dialogue that crop up throughout the film.

But in a more annoying misstep made in the writing department, The Wrong Real Estate Agent is chockful of continuity issues and plot holes that even the most lenient suspension of disbelief can't overlook. The biggest one I noticed is a pretty damning one at that: SPOILER ALERT (sort of) if Charles was spying on Julie through the spy cameras that he had hooked up to the monitors in the locked room, why would she be hearing noises in the attic? We see him up there once as Julie's leaving for her date with Don, but I can't imagine he'd be up there all the time when 1. there's windows in the attic where he could easily be seen from outside and 2. it's implied he's living out of the security room when it's finally uncovered. Spoilers Over All together, these errors become too aggravating to ignore and only make the lather-rinse-repeat storyline harder to get through.

Dragging that story down further, however, is how thoroughly daft its main protagonists and villain are. As The Wrong Cruise's Dante, Andres Londono was masterful at playing the greedy sociopath, giving him an initial suave air that made it understandable why his mark (Vivica A. Fox's Claire Tanner) would trust him so quickly. As The Wrong Real Estate Agent's Charles Milton, however, he might as well have had "Hi, I'm a psycho!" tattooed on his forehead. From his terminal case of Crazy Eyes and almost constant "could-snap-at-any-moment" tone, Londono makes no effort to hide his character's true colors. And because of that, Julie and Maddie look like absolute idiots for not realizing how unstable Charles is until it's too late. It's almost insulting to see the movie try to act like the identity of Julie's stalker is a mystery--both because of Londono's unsubtle performance and the fact that the solution is right there in the title. SPOILER ALERT And while the actions of the film's red herrings (handyman Connor and enigmatic neighbor PJ) might have you thinking there's more to things than they seem, both men are killed off before their odd behavior can be explained. In the end, it's a cut-and-dry case of an Entitled Nice Guy's wrath.

(Dear Lifetime: between this movie and Finding My Daughter, maybe take this as a sign to give the Entitled Nice Guy trope a break? Find some different psychotic male villain motivations to explore for a while) Spoilers Over

In addition to all these problems, The Wrong Real Estate Agent is above all else a dull watch. With the plot sticking so close to formula and the culprit being so obvious both in-universe and out, it's just a yawn-worthy waiting game until Julie finally recognizes Charles for the transparent nutcase he is. And while Londono is fun to watch ham it up when Charles goes full-blown looney tunes, such moments are few and far between and aren't nearly enough to counteract the slog you have to endure to get to them. When the most action a majority of your thriller has is the main heroine being alarmed by strange sounds at night, you know you've screwed up somewhere along the line. SPOILER ALERT And similar to The Wrong Tutor, the movie ends with Charles making the out-of-character decision to flee when the police approach rather than make a last-ditch effort to keep Julie, with his awful final line only rubbing salt into the wound. At least his final fate--taking refuge in a random house's attic to hide from the law--makes more sense than Emily Miller finding a new target for obsession after swearing to never let go of her original mark.

(And an aesthetic nitpick: towards the end of the movie when Julie is searching around Charles' house, the camera suddenly gets blurred and fuzzy. Whether this was accidental or an artistic choice, it struck me as weird) Spoilers Over

Going back to the Inexplicable Bad Acting Syndrome I mentioned, some actors are less affected by the condition than others. Gina Hiraizumi, who plays Julie's co-worker friend Annie, emerges as the most unscathed of the bunch. While she has her stiff moments like everyone else, Hiraizumi's performance feels the most at-ease of the bunch. She's also helped by the fact that Annie seems to be the only person in this universe with a brain, being quick to point out to Julie what a loon Charles is and try to warn her (to no avail) not to trust him.

Dorian Gregory gives Julie's would-be boyfriend Don a solid dose of charm during his date scene with Fox and Tom Sandoval is effectively sleazy as handyman Connor. And when her character isn't being unbelievably dumb, Fox is able to give Julie a touch of likability via her usual brand of lovable attitude. Unfortunately, despite having a more central role than the one she had in The Wrong Stepfather, Alaya Lee Walton's performance still has the same kinks I mentioned in that review. But of the cast, Rib Hillis and Ciarra Carter get hit by IBAS the worst, with Carter's wooden delivery as Detective Simms being comparable to Mercy Malick's from Revenge for Daddy. But as I mentioned before, the dialogue is sometimes so awkward that it's somewhat understandable that the cast would have trouble giving it any life.

After the enjoyable drama that was The Wrong Cheerleader Coach, it's a shame that the "Wrong" saga's first offering of 2021 could be this awful. The people behind The Wrong Real Estate Agent aren't strangers to the series, and the same can be said for most of the cast. But watching this trite trainwreck of a movie, with its plot-hole-ridden script and flimsy characters, you would think this was a knockoff of the DeCoteau franchise made by amateurs. The unwieldy dialogue and uninspired acting only add to that atmosphere. With four more new "Wrong" installments on the horizon, we can only hope that this misfire isn't a precursor of what's to come.

Score: 2 out of 10 encryption protocols.