Villainess Review: Dana Declan (Fatal Reunion)

I remember this film, Fatal Reunion, very well, and one of the reasons was the film's leading lady, Erika Eleniak. Eleniak had done her share of Lifetime films, and was coming off playing a villainess in one of them. In this film from 2005, Eleniak played Jessica Landers, a woman who wasn't quite satisfied in her marriage to Russell Landers. At the urgency of her friends, Jessica meets up with her former schoolmate, Marcus Declan, but after realizing how much she loved Russell (and vice versa), the meetings come to an end.

What begins afterwards is a series of sinister mishaps, as Jessica finds herself on the receiving end of attacks by a deranged stalker. Her car is vandalized and her dog is poisoned, and following these occurrences, Jessica reveals her meetings with Marcus to Russell, with the added suspicion that Marcus was Jessica's stalker. Later on, the couple was visited by Lisa Calders, a woman who introduced herself as a lawyer with a connection to Marcus. Regarding the connection, Lisa informed the couple that she represented Marcus when he was accused of murdering his mistress, Nicole Kingsley, but after his acquittal, Lisa stated that she now suspects that he may had killed Nicole, even though Marcus' wife gave an alibi for his whereabouts.

Lisa offered to help Jessica and Russell trap Marcus, and it was after Jessica was nearly run down in a parking lot that she agreed to Lisa's plan. However, Russell had his doubts about Lisa, who set up a meeting between Jessica and Marcus, while Russell himself decided to look into Lisa. As Russell discovered, Lisa Calders doesn't exist, and afterwards, Russell found out about the meeting and rushed to an abandoned building where the "trap" was set to take place. He encountered Jessica, and found Marcus tied up, while attempting to warn his wife about "Lisa."

It was at that moment that "Lisa" appeared and revealed her true name: Dana Declan--Marcus' wife. As it turned out, Dana was Nicole's killer; having found out about the affair and stalking Nicole before shooting her to death, and she gave her alibi to cover her own tracks. She found out about Marcus' meetings with Jessica and began stalking the latter, and had been behind all of the aforementioned mishaps: poisoning Jessica's dog, vandalizing Jessica's car, and the attempt on Jessica at the parking lot. Both Marcus and Jessica denied having an affair, but even though they were truthful, those of us who watch these films know that facts don't mean anything to deliciously deranged madwomen. Dana's twisted mind was set on her belief that there was something going on between Marcus and Jessica, and she was set on killing her husband, Jessica, and Russell, planning to stage the deaths as a double murder-suicide committed by Marcus.

Dana manages to shoot both intended male victims (who survived), but was tripped up by Marcus, allowing Jessica to escape. What followed was a pursuit between villainess and heroine--the latter having encountered Russell before he was knocked out by the former. Dana made one last attempt to kill Jessica, but she ended up impaled with a steel rod by Jessica, ending her attempted rampage.

Fatal Reunion is a film I've watched on Lifetime a few times, and on Tubi on one occasion, and the reason for that is very simple: this film had a very amazing and awesome villainess in the form of Dana Declan, played very brilliantly by the phenomenal Juliet Landau. It's no surprise that Landau played this role so brilliantly; for one, she is best known for playing deranged vampiress Drusilla on Buffy and Angel, and Dana is basically Drusilla if she were human. Secondly, Juliet Landau is the daughter of legendary actors Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, who co-starred in (among other things) Mission: Impossible together, so she has acting in her blood. Regarding Dana, she was deliciously evil, insane, and bloodthirsty, and she was truly set in her delusional mindset when it came to Marcus. I loved Dana's reveal so much because we truly see her go from a calm 0 to a psychotic 60 just like that, it was just a wonderfully chilling performance from Landau. Plus, the shot of Landau donning the "hoodie of evil" in a brief flashback is a big bonus.

Juliet Landau's done the whole "evil" thing quite a bit in her career; doing so in other films such as Theodore Rex and Monster Mutt, as well as an episode of Criminal Minds. Speaking of TV, Landau's appeared on shows such as Le Femme Nikita, Millennium, and Claws, and has done voice work on animated shows such as Justice League Unlimited and Ben 10.

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Check out Dana Declan's profile on Villainous Beauties Wiki!