Obsessed to Death (1Department Entertainment Services, Neshama Entertainment, Neshama Releasing, MarVista Entertainment, Lifetime, 2022, "premiered" 2023)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger's Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

After that Charles and I watched another Lifetime movie, Obsessed to Death, which was billed as a “premiere” even though the date on its imdb.com page was 2022. I give it points for having fooled me – through the first half of the running time I thought that the central character, Cassandra “Cassie” Collins (Holland Roden), was an innocent victim whose rotter boyfriend Austin (a hot Black stud played by Colton Royce) had dumped her for fitness instructor Summer Ray (Kathryn Kohut) even though Summer was playing around on him with an equally studly white guy whom Cassie spied her with at a high-end coffeehouse. Then we learn that Cassie is actually a crazy bitch who latched onto Austin for three dates before he got tired of her clinging nature and “ghosted” her, later hooking up with Summer because she was altogether far more normal. The plot of Obsessed to Death concerns Cassie’s attempts to get on Summer’s livestream from her “Levitate 360” fitness center (I joked to Charles that he’d probably call it “false advertising” because they don’t actually teach you to levitate), including beating up previous Lifetime 360 staff member Stella (Rowen Barnes) and temporarily disabling her to get Stella’s slot as the one-a-month newbie Summer puts on the program, then ignoring Summer’s instructions that the newbie is only supposed to do low-impact exercises on the program and going all out with dumbbells on camera. From then on the film, made under the auspices of a large eenumber of production companies (1Department Entertainment Services, Neshama Entertainment, Neshama Releasing, MarVista Entertainment and Lifetime itself) and directed by Stefan Brogren from a script by Jessica Landry and Rowan Wheeler, turns into a pretty typical Lifetime 101 crazy-woman thriller, as Cassie befriends Summer and ultimately gets invited to her home.

Then Cassie goes on a double date with Summer and Austin – who diplomatically pretends not to have known Cassie before. Cassie’s own partner for the date is Kevin (Bradley Hamilton), a male “escort” she’s hired for the evening – and whom she later has sex with, albeit behind closed doors (“at your place, not mine,” she insists) so we don’t get the expected soft-core porn scene between them. Kevin agrees to fuck her on the basis that she’s already paid him his going rate, so she might as well get his, uh, “full service.” Cassie attracts the instant ire of Gage (Jesse Reynolds), yet another hot (white) stud who may or may not be the man Cassie saw Summer with in the coffeehouse (through its street windows) and who plays his part in such a screaming-queen manner it’s obvious he’s supposed to be Gay. Alas, he’s one of those annoying “movie Gays” whom we never actually see displaying physical affection of any sort towards another male, nor do we hear him mention a partner – just a quick reference to a bar he likes to frequent. Gage is immediately suspicious of Cassie’s true intentions, so Cassie dispatches him by drugging his omnipresent bottle of Gatorade (or some amber-orange fluid he drinks regularly to keep hydrated) until he gets very sick and collapses on camera during one of Summer’s live-streamed workout sessions. He’s ultimately hospitalized, though he recovers and I think he’s still alive at the end even though in the final bloodbath sequence … well, I’m jumping ahead. Cassie has done such a great job worming her way into Summer’s life and affections she challenges Summer and Austin to a three-way, including shooting selfies of herself and Summer making out and giving each other open-mouthed kisses. Then Cassie publishes these to her social-media page (the story is driven by social media and one of Cassie’s big points of jealousy is how many more orders of magnitude followers Summer has than she does) and Summer demands that she delete the post, not because she’s shown in a provocative sexual pose with another woman but because she’s shown drinking wine, and consuming any sort of alcohol is not her “brand.”

Later Cassie comes over to Summer’s place with another wine bottle she says is a “peace offering,” only she drugs it first and puts them both under. Then she tries to rape Austin, only he comes to earlier than she was expecting and she stabs him to death with a corkscrew, then claims she did so in self-defense to avoid him raping her. Cassie also eliminates Stella (ya remember Stella?) by smothering her to death with an exercise ball (my husband Charles wondered whether that would be possible, given how much “give” those things have) and left her body in the Levitate 360 basement, then lures both Summer and Gage down there. She first leads an exercise class in Summer’s stead and then leaves Summer and Gage bloodied and on their way out – her goal seems to be to take over Summer’s identity completely, and to this end she calls herself “Cassandra Day” (while along the way we’ve discovered that “Summer Ray”’s real last name is Barker) – which makes it something of a surprise that Gage is still alive at the end. The movie ends with Cassie taken into custody – this is set in Chicago, by the way, though we don’t know that for sure until we’re told it’s the Chicago Police Department that’s arresting her – and a title reading “Six Months Later,” with Summer back on the air (or at least live-streaming her classes again) with most of the survivors in tow. Obsessed to Death is a pretty mediocre movie that could have been a good deal better; director Brogren has a knack for Gothic atmosphere but he’s hamstrung by the stupid Landry-Wheeler script, which once Cassie is revealed as a villainess instead of a naïve heroine timidly goes where thousands of Lifetime movies have gone before. Casting directors Lindsay Chag and Ilona Smyth deserve credit at least for picking two actresses for the female leads who resemble each other enough that it’s believable one could try to pass herself off as the other – it’s not always easy to tell Holland Roden and Kathryn Kohut apart, which is why the conceit of the story that Cassie wants to take over Summer’s identity actually works. Overall, though, Obsessed to Death is a pretty workmanlike Lifetime semi-thriller that really loses steam midway through when it’s revealed Cassie is actually a psycho villainess – exactly the opposite of what happened in Maid for Revenge, which gains added strength and power from the revelation of who the villain was and what was her motive.