Stream It or Skip It: ‘Hunting Housewives’ on Lifetime Is a Plane Crash of a Movie in Every Way Possible

Lifetime sneaks aboard the Real Housewives franchise via Hunting Housewives, a thriller/comedy (?) starring two bona fide Bravo-lebrities (Denise Richards and NeNe Leakes). But don’t be fooled! Much like Marvel and DC, Lifetime’s universe of badass women is separated from Bravo’s by multimillion dollar corporations — at least until Disney buys Universal and Warner Bros. LOL we’re fine everything is fine — but the protagonists of Hunting Housewives are not fine! They survived a plane crash (mostly) and now they have to tough it out in the woods while unknowingly starring in the most dangerous reality show ever. The question is, is this just an off-brand grab for the Housewives devotees, or is it a new camp classic (pun intended)?

HUNTING HOUSEWIVES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The movie opens with a scene pulled out of the Lost pilot — if Lost had been produced with 1/1000th of the budget and starred Denise Richards. But there she is, Denise Richards, scrambling amidst the smoking wreckage of a private plane, repeating “Please don’t be dead, Sharell” so many times that it may as well be the chorus to a Kim Petras bop. Richards, an alum of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, plays Karla Dodds — and you need to remember that name because this movie loves aimlessly tossing out nouns, leaving you clueless about their target.

So: Denise Richards plays Karla, the wife of a reality TV mega-producer (Mark Ghanimé); Melyssa Ford (Canadian podcasting queen) plays new age-y influencer Sharell of “Please don’t be dead, Sharell” fame; Kym Johnson Herjavec (Dancing with the Stars) plays Joli, who is Australian; and Real Housewives of Atlanta legend NeNe Leakes plays Rebel, who I’m convinced was given that name because it’s fun to hear an Australian say “rebel.”

The plot of the movie is pretty uncomplicated: Karla’s husband Mark is a sadistic sociopath who engineered a girls’ trip to a fake spa so he could strand — or, fingers crossed, kill — his wife and her meddling, materialistic friends in the woods via a plane crash. And because of the reality TV angle that is inextricably tied to the word “housewife” now, of course Mark set up dozens of cameras in the woods so he and the other husbands can watch the cruelest reality series since The Swan. This comes as a surprise to the other three husbands, BTW, who all react to varying degrees of WTF. It doesn’t help that Mark is waving a gun around at all times. These men are going to enjoy this show or else.

But we don’t care about the husbands! We want to see Denise Richards — excuse me, Karla and company rough it like they’re enduring the ultimate girls trip from hell. They can dress themselves but can they dress a wound? They can make scorching remarks, but can they make a fire? Can they stare death in the face and say, “Ugh, not now!”? Hunting Housewives will sorta give you those answers and not much more!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This is kind of a mix between an episode of Real Housewives and Hallmark’s Retreat to You — or maybe it’s an all-grown-ups Troop Beverly Hills by way of Black Mirror, presented by Lifetime.

Performance Worth Watching: You will find no fences left standing around the film Hunting Housewives, for most of the cast spends the majority of the film swinging for the fences and knocking them down plank by plank. I want to say that NeNe Leakes, who really lends the movie a lot of cred, performs like she’s doing a good version of Peppermint’s impersonation of her on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9’s Snatch Game… if that makes any sense. But the real standout has to be Melyssa Ford’s Sharell, who treats the whole plane crash situation as if it’s an annoying inconvenience, like she’s stuck in traffic on the way to the Renaissance World Tour.

Memorable Dialogue: I mean, I could just put a transcription of the entire movie right here, but I’ll single out the lines that I had to jot down while watching. Also SPOILERS because some of these are laugh-out-loud funny jokes:

• “It’s like there’s nothing left of her!”
• “No way.” “Way“
• “I don’t ever break a nail.”
• “Honestly I thought they’d all die on impact”
• “Oh my god, do we literally have to rub sticks together right now?”
• “When you think about it, the survival diet is basically paleo.”
• “Ugh, you guys, I can’t deal with any more bats.”
• “Is it time that we eat our last protein bar?” “It’s time.”
• “We can’t have a dead body by the campsite, dude!”
• “I know you thought crystals were designed for people who can’t afford jewelry”
• “I took a rock throwing class in Alaska once”
• “Be a better person!”

Sex and Skin: None — these women are trying to survive, okay?!

Our Take:To quote the great Alyssa Edwards, “Mama, this is garbage” — and I’m here to point out that garbage bags can feel like fluffy clouds if you ignore the smell! It’s been a while since I’ve seen a Lifetime or Hallmark movie that is this deranged from top to bottom, where every choice makes you go, “Wow, okay, we’re doing that!” This is a movie called Hunting Housewives, yet there is next to no hunting in the movie. Mark expects he can get away with his evil plan, yet every one of the tennis ball-sized, conspicuous black cameras have a sticker on the back with his name on them. I don’t think my mouth closed once while watching, because either my jaw was dropped or I was cackling out loud.

That’s what makes Hunting Housewives a success. It walks the line between intentionally and unintentionally funny that is so necessary when you’re crafting what should become a favorite amongst friends who live to tear into a bad movie at a house party. There’s no way anyone involved in this production thought they were making a serious thriller. On the other hand, it’s hilariously callous how our surviving housewives treat the grisly death of one of their own as if she had to bow out of a bachelorette party early because she had bad sushi. Every five minutes, one of our heroes practically goes, “Oh, remember her? Oh, [our dear friend whose remains litter the surrounding area] was the best. Shots for her! Shots! Yaaasss!” It’s hilarious every single time.

The only place I can ding Hunting Housewives is in the survival part of the film, which should honestly be 90% of the movie but is too often interrupted so we can watch the husbands watch their wives stumble around the same crash site. I wanted more roughing it, more animal encounters, more treacherous trails, and definitely a lot more hunting. But since this is a movie for Lifetime, our housewives pretty much stay within 10 yards of the wreckage. Even a crucial tree-climbing moment happens offscreen because that would involve someone actually climbing a tree. Think of all the insurance paperwork!

All that being said, let me make it known that I believe I am the only gay man in America who actively avoids the entire Housewives and Bravo-lebrity universe. I’m not interested and I don’t get it. I point that out because there are probably references, possibly even jokes in Hunting Housewives that would register with the franchise’s superfans. I caught none — but I’m proof that you don’t have to be a Housewife devotee to enjoy this plane crash of a movie.

Our Call: STREAM IT — but stream it with your funniest friends.