The Eric Roberts Collection: Dawn (dir by Nicholas Ryan)

Posted on April 26, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2022’s Dawn has a running time of 78 minutes. Eric Roberts is in the film but unfortunately, his nameless character is killed off at the four minute mark. It’s a bit of a pointless cameo, even by Eric Roberts’s standards. If you’re going to get Eric Roberts in your film, do something more than just have him pathetically beg for his life. Is it worth watching a 78-minute Eric Roberts film if you already know that Roberts is going to be in at least 74 of those minutes?

Eric Roberts’s character is killed by Dawn (Jackie Moore), a serial killer who drives around and pretends to be an Uber driver and who makes her victim play various games before killing them. Dawn is a celebrity on the Dark Web. It’s always funny to me how movies like this pretty much use the Dark Web as their go-to plot device. If someone needs a motivation …. hey, Dark Web! If a plot twist doesn’t make any sense, just say it’s somehow connected to the Dark Web or a Russian troll farm. It’s not difficult. Since the entire film is pretty much just Dawn tormenting a couple (played by Sarah French and Jared Cohn), it’s important that Dawn be such a charismatic and witty killer that we’re willing to put up with antisocial actions. Unfortunately, as played by Moore, she’s just annoying.

Roberts is not the only celebrity to make an appearance as Dawn. In one of the film’s few effective moments, Nicholas Brendon shows up as a man at a gas station who is a huge fan of Dawn’s and who wants her to murder him. Later, Michael Pare shows up as a cop who pulls over the car. How many times has Pare played a cop in movies like this? He always seems to be pulling someone over.

Anyway, it didn’t take me long to get bored with this, despite the fact that both French and Cohn gave better performances than the film deserved. There’s only so much that can be explained away by saying, “Dark Web.”

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Cleaning Out The DVR: Nightmare Best Friend (dir by John Murlowski)

Posted on January 5, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

(I recorded Nightmare Best Friend off of Lifetime on December 29th.)

Everyone’s had that one best friend.

She was the one who gave you the courage to flirt with the hot ones and roll your eyes at the strange ones. She was the one who taught you how to shoplift without getting caught. She was there when you had your first drink and the first time you got high. She was the first one you went to for advice. She was the one that called when you needed to cry. She was your sister in almost every way and you swore that the two of you would be best friends forever.

Then you graduated high school and you two drifted apart. Sure, you’re Facebook friends and you follow each other on twitter and occasionally, you might exchange greetings and an inside joke but it’s not the same. Usually, it’s a case that one of you has grown up while the other hasn’t. One of you is busy adulting while the other is still living for the moment. Though neither one of you admit it, your friendship has now become consumed with a mix of jealousy and barely concealed malice. You want her life. She wants your life. It’s perhaps best that you live in separate states now.

And then one day, your former best friend shows up on your doorstep and all Hell breaks loose….

That’s the situation in which Katy (Rosslyn Luke) finds herself in Nightmare Best Friend. Katy has a nice house, a nice life, and a nice family. She’s living the ideal suburban lifestyle. And then, one day, her old friend Gina (Jackie Moore) shows up.

At first, Katy is excited to see Gina. They go back to their old high school and run through the hallways, screaming. They talk about how wild they used to be. Gina even tries to convince Katy to take part in a little shoplifting. It’s all wonderful, until Gina’s boyfriend, Ray (Brandon Howell) shows up. Katy takes an instant dislike to Ray. (It probably has something to do with the knife that he’s always waving around.) For his part, Ray doesn’t seem to care much for Katy either. However, he needs Katy. It turns out that Ray is a criminal and to pull off his latest scam, he’s going to require Katy to help him whether Katy wants to or not.

Nightmare Best Friend features two excellent lead performances from Rosslyn Luke and Jackie Moore and a convincingly menacing one from Brandon Howell. Howell played Ray with just the right combination of bad boy charm and psychotic posturing. You could understand why Gina fell for him, while at the same time also understanding why Gina would be too scared to defy him. Even more importantly, the friendship between Gina and Katy felt real. You could imagine that two of them actually being friends in high school but you could just as easily understand why they had eventually drifted apart. Elevated by a trio of strong performances, Nightmare Best Friend is an enjoyable Lifetime melodrama.

Film Review: Killer Island (dir by Alyn Darnay)

Posted on May 23, 2018 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to paradise!

In this case, paradise is North Captiva Island, which is located just offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a beautiful location, a great place to both take a vacation and perhaps even solve a murder!

In Killer Island, Mike (Brian Gross) and Ashley (Barbie Castro) have come to Captiva Island for a variety of reason. They’ve come for a vacation and they’ve come to work on their struggling marriage. Ashley has memories of growing up on the island and issues from the past that she needs to deal with. And Mike … well, Mike really wants to go fishing. Fortunately, their friend Jim Ross (Jordi Vilasuso) has a very nice boat.

Jim also has a nephew. Johnny (Miguel Fasa) is the handyman at the local resort. He’s always polite and he’s a good worker. Still, it shouldn’t take long for most viewers to suspect that Johnny might have some issues. His constantly blood-shot eyes give hint to the fact that Johnny doesn’t get much sleep. As he explains it at one point, he has dreams and they’re not good ones. Johnny has a complicated history and two women have recently vanished on the island…

When Ashley finds a broken anklet on a dock, she takes it back to her room. The locals tell her that people are losing stuff on the island all the time and that it’s probably no big deal. “Finders keepers,” they tell her. Ashley just likes it because the words “Hope” and “Believe” are inscribed on each side. But when Johnny sees the anklet in Ashley’s bedroom, he freaks out.

Of course, Johnny isn’t the only person on the island with something to hide and nothing, not even murder, is as simple or cut-and-dried as it seems. How far are people willing to go to protect their secrets?

Now, I have to admit that I do have a bias when it comes to reviewing this film. See, my dream vacation would involve not only going to a beautiful location but also getting to solve a mystery while I was there. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Who doesn’t love the idea of escaping everyday life and getting to examine clues and speculate on motives while relaxing on the beach or exploring a tropical paradise? Though the film’s cast does a good job, Captiva Island really is the star of the film. It’s a visually stunning location and the film takes full advantage of it, with the camera swooping over the beaches and focusing on people discussing murder and mystery while the tide comes in behind them. Director Alyn Darnay and cinematographer Jon Schellenger do a good job of capturing the sunny beauty of the island.

As for the plot itself, it’s enjoyably melodramatic. Almost everyone has something that they’re hiding. Some guilty people are easy to spot while others hide their villainy quite well. It’s a nicely acted mystery, with Brian Cross and Barbie Castro making a believable and sympathetic married couple. Miguel Fasa steals the show, turning the unstable Johnny into a character who is both frightening and occasionally even sympathetic. If you’ve enjoyed Barbie Castro’s previous “killer” films (like Patient Killer, Boyfriend Killer, and Girlfriend Killer), you will definitely enjoy this one as well!

Killer Island will be available on VOD on May 25th..