“Secret Obsession” is a thriller that recently premiered on Netflix and was written by Kraig Wenman and Peter Sullivan. Sullivan is also the director. Brenda Song, Mike Vogel, and Dennis Haysbert star in this lackluster cinematic effort.
The premise is a little absurd, but the genre tends to be up my alley so I thought I could find some enjoyment here. Haysbert is really the only one who had the more interesting character of a detective coping with the grief having a daughter kidnapped, however that is not the main plot.
A young woman is run down by a car after fleeing an attack and wakes up with several significant holes in her memory. A man is there claiming to be her husband, however it does not take long for the viewer to suspect this fellow is not to be trusted.
This is a mess. It’s not the worst mess I have seen, but there isn’t much to justify a lot of attention being given to this movie. The performances weren’t completely hopeless, but some of the reasoning behind the actions doesn’t hold up very well. It’s really the writing that needs a second thought here. I also am not sure that amnesia works quite the way that’s depicted here, although that condition does manifest itself in a variety of ways in real life, so maybe…
Anyway, Haysbert has a presence that tends to help a film more than hurts, but I wish he was utilized a little more with a better writer. Mike Vogel could be kind of chilling at times as the doting psychotic, but we have seen this kind of obsessive crazy too many times before. He’s not a bad actor, but there just wasn’t much for him to do to stand out.
I guess this isn’t totally unwatchable, but there are much better options out there.
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