Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Secret Obsession’ On Netflix, A Thriller Where Brenda Song Has To Escape From Her “Husband”

Ah, the stalker movie. You know the genre; the innocent victim — almost always a woman — has no idea that she’s being stalked, either because the person is in the background or, even more creepily, because he’s embedded himself in her life. It’s a classic format, so how a particular film treats that format can make all the difference. Secret Obsession takes that format and gives it a little twist. But does it succeed?

SECRET OBSESSION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The movie opens with an extended scene of a woman named Jennifer Williams (Brenda Song) being chased around a rest stop in a downpour. The guy chasing her, by the way, has a knife. She tries to get away in her car but the person chasing her has hooked it up to a winch on his pickup. She escapes, only to be walloped by another car that can’t see her.

As she’s wheeled into the emergency room, her husband Russell Williams (Mike Vogel) comes in, busts through the doors — “You can’t go back there!” — and is distraught that Jennifer is in a coma. It takes days for her to wake up, and when she does, she has amnesia. She knows who she is and who her parents are, but has no memory of Russell and no memory of how she got in the hospital. Russell talks to her about how they met at work, shows her pictures of the good times, and reminds her that her parents died in a fire two years ago.

Meanwhile, county detective Frank Page (Dennis Haysbert), who still buys birthday presents for the daughter who went missing a decade ago, questions Russell in the hospital, and is suspicious about the circumstances surrounding where she was found and Russell’s story. But, he seems like the caring husband, so what could be the problem?

After weeks of recovery and rehab, we start to wonder who Russell is when he brings Jennifer to a secluded mansion in the woods that he says “has been in my family for a while”. Page calls to set up a time when Jennifer can talk about the accident, but Russell never says anything to Jennifer.

When Jennifer notices something in a snapshot of a party they had at the house, she gets suspicious, as well. And the more suspicious Jennifer gets, the more Russell reveals his true self to her. And that self isn’t exactly a nice guy.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Think Misery crossed with Sleeping With The Enemy, the Netflix series You and the original Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?. The amnesia piece makes us think of a twisted version of Overboard or While You Were Sleeping.

Performance Worth Watching: This is Brenda Song’s movie all the way. She’s the one who has to look terrified at all times, while also being determined to escape Russell’s hell lodge once she figures out what’s really going on. We’ve known that she can do comedy, given her time on The Suite Life and she can do drama, based on Pure Genius and The Social Network. But being in a thriller where she has to play both victim and hero is a delicate balance, and Song shows a lot of strength as Jennifer.

Memorable Dialogue: When returning memories make Jennifer recoil from Russell’s touch as they get intimate, Russell grabs her arm and says “I was there through every step of your recovery, and this is what I get? A wife that won’t let me touch her?” Oh, if only Jennifer thought she had the strength to hobble out of there at that point, things would have been so much easier.

Single Best Shot: We thought it was clever to shoot Jennifer and Russell side by side by shooting her in bed and shooting his reflection in the mirror as he opens the door… with a big fat rope.

Sex and Skin: Other than the scene we mentioned above, and Jennifer’s hazy memories of her wedding night, that’s about it.

Our Take: Secret Obsession is a pretty absurd movie. Directed by Peter Sullivan (The Sandman) from a script he co-wrote with Kraig Wenman (Cyberstalker) this is pure “woman in peril” cheese, that has a fairly obvious plot and lots of leaps of faith. But dammit if there weren’t scenes where we were still getting tense, hoping Jennifer escapes Russell or that Page figures things out.

But, for sure, it’s absurd: Almost from the second the handsome Russell bursts into the emergency room, we know that he’s up to no good, and it didn’t take long for us to say, “she doesn’t remember him because he’s not her husband,” well before the clues to that started appearing on screen.

That’s not the only absurdity, though. There’s a misdirect at the beginning of the movie that isn’t explained at all. Page’s backstory gets dropped like a hot potato once he really starts getting information that leads him to the conclusion that Russell isn’t who he says he is. And Russell feels like the world’s sloppiest stalker, leaving more than enough clues and loose ends to lead both Jennifer and Det. Page to pretty easily-discerned conclusions. Oh, and there’s a scene where he walks through a parking lot with shopping cart contains a massive bag with “LYE” in big letters on it and no one notices. Silly little things like that are noticeable as the absurdities pile up.

Despite the silliness of the whole movie, Sullivan builds up more than enough tension to get you rooting for Jennifer and hope that she escapes whatever predicament she’s in before Russell comes back. It also helps that Song and Haysbert do fine jobs in their roles, and Vogel (whom we didn’t love in Under The Dome) makes for a passable psychopath.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Secret Obsession‘s cheesiness and plot holes feel like they’re put there on purpose to make what seems like a straightforward stalker film more entertaining. If so, bravo. If not, it still won’t deter you from enjoying a movie that has enough tension to spare.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Secret Obsession on Netflix