Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Fatal Affair’ on Netflix, a Preposterous Thriller That Should Be a Lot Funnier Than it Is

Netflix’s Fatal Affair violates the unspoken 30-plus-year moratorium on non-parody movies with the word “fatal” in the title, especially non-parody movies about certified-crazy stalkers bent on inserting knives into and/or boiling alive stalkees and/or their spouses, children, childrens’ significant others and/or pets, including, but not limited to, rabbits. Of course, maybe Fatal Affair is best appreciated as parody, unintentional as it may be, which only makes the endeavor that much funnier, hopefully.

FATAL AFFAIR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Right off the bat, we see a couple makin’ love by firelight, and before the refractory period is even over, they’re dead as hell by an unseen hand. Cut to the California coast, where Ellie (Nia Long) and Marcus (Stephen Bishop) unpack boxes in their new, gigantic seaside home that they can totally afford because she’s a lawyer and he’s an architect. They say a bunch of things like “Gee aren’t you glad we moved away from the city?” so we, the audience watching the movie, know that they used to live in the city. They have a daughter in college and Ellie’s leaving the firm to start her own practice and Stephen has a huge scar on his shoulder which might have something to do with the assortment of prescription bottles on his very clean, neo-modern nightstand. They settle into their gauze-curtained bed that looks like it cost 10 grand not counting the luxury organic 10,000-thread-count sheets, backs to each other. No time for love in your new very expensive house, it seems. Ellie sighs deeply and frowns herself to sleep.

At the firm she hasn’t left yet to start her own practice, Ellie sits down in a meeting where her boss says she’ll miss Ellie after she leaves to start her own practice. One of the unexpected attendees is David (Omar Epps), Ellie’s old college friend, hired as a tech consultant for a case. It’s been 20 years since they didn’t date at all, and they end up catching up over drinks and wondering out loud why they didn’t date at all, and she shares that she lies down next to her husband and just doesn’t know who he is anymore. What happens next is, they do what just comes naturally, getting sex-ayyy, and, welp, now she’s keeping secrets. But at least she pushed him away from the not-at-all gross dance club bathroom countertop after panties are dropped but before consummation occurs, which doesn’t sit well with the other infidelitous participant.

Ellie feels guilty and compensates by trying to reignite the flames of eroticalism with Marcus, who puts his arms around her and they KNEAD some DOUGH in a very SENSUAL manner on their polished-marble countertops as the Pacific waves lap at their private beach. Meanwhile, David sees his shrink, who speaks in plot points about his court-ordered anger management and such, and he says he’s got a new lover and she believes him. Uh oh. Cue the peeper cam as Crazy Davey spies on Ellie and Marcus doing the very nice nasty between the gauze curtains surrounding their bed that looks like it cost 10 grand not counting the luxury organic zillion-thread-count sheets in their in their new, gigantic seaside home that they can totally afford because she’s a lawyer and he’s an architect. Maybe, just maybe, David had something to do with the dead firelight humpers we saw at the beginning of the movie, which surely is gonna get more bonkers before it gets ever-after happy?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Swimfan!

Performance Worth Watching: Hats off to the likeable cast for getting paid. But I will not answer this on the grounds that it will potentially incriminate me for implying that there’s something worth watching in this movie.

Memorable Dialogue: A hundred Oscars to Long and Epps for surviving this exchange:

David, with crazy eyes: “Who do you think you’re talking to, DEBORAH?”

Ellie, confused: “Who the hell is DEBORAH?”

Sex and Skin: Get the ice bath ready so you can cool off after witnessing the kinkiest heavily stylized sex scenes a body can wedge into a TV-14 movie!

Our Take: Ooooh, Preposterous Thriller time! Suspend your disbelief from the nearest $479 Restoration Hardware coat rack and settle in for some juicy twists and spleen-numbing suspense! It’s too bad this ludicrous display of implied conspicuous consumption and feeble stalker-movie cliches is so disappointingly derivative, it makes a Tyler Perry thriller look only slightly worse.

Director Peter Sullivan graduates from at least 14 TV Christmas movies since 2011 to this anti-charismatic 89 minutes of awful dialogue and disappointingly non-hysterical tamped-down performances. Long grins and bears it as her character makes a series of moronic decisions, allowing David to stack all the Jengas precariously against her. And Epps looks like he should be having more fun playing a “hacker” who’s kind enough to give the plot an easy out by failing to enable the passcode feature on his smartphone, and enjoys a scintillatingly tense scene in which he deletes an email and empties the trash folder like only the most gifted tech geniuses would think to do.

Fatal Affair is two things a Preposterous Thriller should never be: boring and aggravating. Its attempts at comedy roll along on four flat Michelins, and its drama isn’t funny either, inspiring disappointingly few derisive laughs, which do finally arrive in the final moments, after the protagonists knock down the villain and run away again and again, allowing him to get up and attack again and again, instead of, you know, finishing him off or at least seriously debilitating him while he’s on the ground, thus preventing any further incidents of attempted murder. Apologies if I make this all sound more entertaining than it is, but let it be known that this movie will inspire half-mast eyerolls at best.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Fatal Affair is too lame and phoned-in to even occasion a hate-watch.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Fatal Affair on Netflix