| There’s a very difficult line to balance between pure camp and a mash-up between romantic comedy and murder mystery thriller, and F Marry Kill struggles for the entire length of the movie. It often veers into camp despite multiple efforts to be a more legitimate comedic thriller. When the main character is constantly debating whether or not her dates are marriage material or a serial killer, it’s kind of destined to be the exact level of camp it ends up as. | | 2024
Directed by: Laura Murphy
Screenplay by: Ivan Diaz, Dan Scheinkman, Meghan Brown
Starring: Lucy Hale, Brooke Nevin, Virginia Gardner
|
Eva (Lucy Hale) is a 30-ish single woman in a personal and professional rut. After finding out that her ex-boyfriend is engaged, she decides it’s time to hit the dating apps, just as a new serial killer known as the Swipe Right Killer is also finding their victims on the dating apps. She has some friends who are encouraging her, because, really what are the odds that you’re going to be murdered? Meanwhile she has an older sister who freaks out at the mere thought of Eva having sex with near strangers and is not handling the dating a potential serial killer thing very well.
The film has a lot of sound issues early on. The main sound is at a lower volume than the edited in sound effects (background bar chatter, phone sounds, and app swiping sounds – most of which don’t even sound realistic since the syncing was not well done); this is very distracting at the beginning, but isn’t nearly as noticeable once we get into the actual plot (and away from the apps).
Eva found three potential guys and immediately turns into a game of Fuck, Marry, Kill, which admittedly is a fun thing to turn into an actual movie. Although in this version she’s looking for red flags to see if any of them could be a serial killer. And of course she does very quickly multiple of those flags.
The film slows down a bit as Eva and her friends identify the serial killer flags when I think most people in the audience are going to know those are not serial killer flags just general red flags that you absolutely should not date these guys. And yet she still seems to think that one of them might be marriage material.
It gets easier to get invested when more clues to help solve the murder mystery drop. Since I do love playing along with murder mysteries (as I assume most people do), I will say that I was wrong, but very close in a satisfying way. Although the actual ending is way more camp than my predicted ending would have been.
F Marry Kill works way better as a campy crime thriller than a romantic comedy. It’s never laugh-out-loud hilarious, but it is amusing and it can be a fun watch, just make sure to never take it seriously.
|
