Reviewed by
Christopher Armstead
Vanessa, played by Jaci Williamson, is having a very, very bad day. She’s come home early only to find her man in bed with her best friend and boy is she pissed. So pissed off is Vanessa that part of her has split off into another personality who hangs in the shadows and gives Vanessa really, really bad advice. Yep, The Crazy done got Vanessa and it will not let her go in this low budget urban thriller ‘Subtle Seduction’, which we gotta admit wasn’t all that subtle.
So Vanessa likes to hang out at this club, apparently the only club in Chicago where this movie takes place, and there she meets the fast talking Rex (Alex Thomas). Now I could’ve told Vanessa right off the bat that Rex doesn’t look like the ideal rebound guy but she’s not listening to me as the two strike up a fast relationship and eventually become bed mates. Rex does occasionally get sexy phone calls which require him to leave the room and whisper off in private which doesn’t make Vanessa very happy, plus Rex is apparently so magnetic that women just walk right up to him and throw game his way, which also makes Vanessa unhappy and brings her alter ego out who tells Vanessa that its time to escalate this situation. So much for Rex.
Rex’s unfortunate demise brings crack detective Damien Tierney (Eric Lane) on the scene who, along with his partner Lois (Elizabeth Abraham) have come to the determination that Rex has been murdered. Mind you Rex died from a bad reaction to a food product so obviously these two are absolutely Sherlockian in their abilities to deduce. Vanessa meanwhile has gotten herself another man who unfortunately has a sister. You see where we see a sibling Vanessa sees a cheating whore and yet another man is short for this world.
Our Sherlockian detectives have come to the conclusion that Vanessa is our murderer because she’s has link to both men and has been seen acting KARAZAY on numerous occasions but they need solid proof. This requires Damien to go undercover, though nobody in his office told him to do this, to get close to Vanessa to get the truth. His partner thinks he’s nuts, his girlfriend Grace (Buffie ‘The Body’ Carruth) is feeling neglected and his co-worker detective Reuben (Simeon Henderson) hates him. I don’t really know why but he does. Hated him from the start, hates in the end.
Sure enough Detective Tierney goes deep undercover, and we mean Larry Fishburn ‘Deep Cover’ deep, with Vanessa declaring her undying love to him, but we did mention that Vanessa is KARAZAY right? It’s just a matter of time before she finds out the truth and somebody isn’t going to survive the night.
We’ll get into this movie in a minute but one of things I got out of this movie is that it introduced my poor sheltered self to Buffie ‘The Body’ Carruth and that’s exactly how her name was marquied as this movie started. Once you see the scene where Buffie and actor Eric Lane finish up their morning jog, mind you Buffie doesn’t really look like the exercising type, you see exactly why they call this woman ‘The Body’. Now I’m curious and need more information. Apparently Buffie’s gargantuan behind is part genetics, part Kool-Aid and part fried chicken. Yes, that sounds mighty offensive and we can neither confirm nor deny if this info is true or not but that’s what the Internet said. What is true is Buffie’s booty is taking real good care of her.
Anyway, directed by Christopher Nolen ‘Subtle Seduction’ is pretty terrible for most part. Technically speaking is was pretty erratic with some scenes looking excellent and other scenes looking as if the cinematographer was on break. Acting wise it was erratic as well with good performances by Eric Lane and Simeon Henderson, while Jaci Williamson might have a been a bit over the top with her crazyness and some of the other performances coming off as amateurish. Probably the biggest issue with this film was the story as it jumped around a lot and did feature probably world’s worst cops chasing down the worlds worst villainess. Basic Instinct probably closed the door on cops having sex with crazy suspects but here it wasn’t even necessary. Admittedly my collective knowledge of police procedure comes from watching ‘Law and Order’ but I’m thinking real cops would do almost none of the stuff that these cops did in this movie. And as is typical in a Maverick distributed flick I don’t remember seeing that scene at the bottom of the box cover in the movie and I’m not sure who that woman is on the right of the box at the top.
But despite the fact that ‘Subtle Seduction’ is flawed beyond repair it is still strangely watchable and even entertaining to some extent. There’s Buffie’s behind for starters which doesn’t get near the screen time it deserves, which we have attempted to rectify off the left over there, and while Jaci Williamson was completely over the top, she was still fun to watch do her thing. Plus it was plenty energetic. I always say if you don’t know where you’re going you should still try to get there as fast as possible and this movie does do that.
