Jason Tobias | Through the Shattered Lens

(Lisa is not just watching horror movies! She is also trying to clean out her DVR! She has got over 200 movies that she needs to watch before January 1st! Will she make it? Keep checking here to find out! She recorded Open Marriage off of Lifetime on February 4th!)

Sometimes, cleaning out the DVR really does make you feel as if you’ve stepped into a time machine.

Take Open Marriage, for instance. I recorded this film on February 4th and, as soon as I watched it, I was transported back to those romantic days leading up to Valentine’s Day. Suddenly, I once again found myself in a time when every other commercial was either for Fifty Shades Darker or Adore Me lingerie. I was reminded of how, from the beginning of January to the end of March, not a single day went by that I didn’t say to my boyfriend, “You like it too. Right, babe?”

(If you’ve seen the commercial, you know what I’m talking about. If not, don’t worry about it.)

Anyway, it’s appropriate that Open Marriage aired in between all of those commercials for Fifty Shades Darker. Much like the Fifty Shades movies, Open Marriage is one of those films that pretends to be all decadent but which is actually kind of silly. Ron (Tilky Jones) and Becca (Nikki Leigh) are young, pretty, and married but they’ve got some problems. Ron recently hurt his back and he’s been out of work for a year. They’ve got a huge house but they’re struggling financially. Despite Ron’s big sexy tattoo, there’s no more spark to their marriage.

However, things change when they visit their friends, Mindy (Kelly Dowdle) and Max (Jason Tobias). Mindy and Max are young, pretty, and married but they don’t spend all of their time fighting. How is this possible!? Could it be because they’re rich and have an even bigger house than Ron and Becca? Or could it be the fact that they have an open marriage? Ron and Becca may say that they’re skeptical about the whole open marriage thing but they get so turned on by the idea that they have very passionate Lifetime-approved sex right before the first commercial break.

Naturally, all of this leads to the two couples experimenting with each other. This means going to a secret club and getting a private room in back. One of the rules is that the two couples always have to be together but, instead, Becca and Max go off on their own. Ron gets upset and demands an end to all the swinging. Becca agrees but soon finds herself tempted to return to the club. The club, by the way, is named Caligula. I assume that Nero was already taken.

Anyway, I liked Open Marriage because it offered up three of my favorite things: trashy sex, trashy lingerie, and trashy melodrama. On the one hand, the movie is totally ludicrous and kind of silly. On the other hand, it’s so totally over the top that it’s impossible not to be amused and entertained by it all. If nothing else, Open Marriage was better than Fifty Shades Darker so let’s give credit where credit is due.

Most Likely To Die is a slasher film about a group of old friends who gather at a remote house for the weekend. It’s their high school reunion and almost everyone’s looking forward to getting caught up on old times. What they don’t know is that there is a killer in their midst and that killer is going to kill them one by one. Even worse, he’s going to do it in a way that ironically comments on their senior year superlatives.

Fortunately, everyone received a superlative that lends itself to an ironic death. Seriously, this killer is just lucky that Most Likely To Eat Anything was friends with Most Likely To Break Hearts and Most Likely To Be Put On Ice. Just imagine if Most Likely To Kill A Psycho had shown up for the weekend? And what if he had brought his wife, Most Likely Not To Split Up In The Face Of Danger? That would have screwed everything up!

Who is the killer? Well, the natural suspect is John Daughtery. He was the outcast who all the kids made fun of. They even vandalized his yearbook entry, declaring him to be “Most Likely To Die.” John was pretty upset about that but then it got even worse when a gun was discovered in his locker! That pretty much ruined John’s life!

But maybe it’s not John. Maybe it’s Tarkin, the groundskeeper. Tarkin used to own a liquor store but he lost it when it was discovered that he was selling alcohol to underage kids. Could Tarkin be looking for revenge? Or is he just a perv who obsessively hangs around outside a certain bedroom window? Tarkin, incidentally, is played by Jake Busey and, whenever Busey shows up in a slasher film, you know he’s either going to be the murderer or the film’s biggest red herring.

Then again, maybe this killer is Perez Hilton!

Seriously, Perez Hilton is in this movie and it’s not stunt casting. Perez actually plays a real character and, at no point, does he wink at the audience and go, “It’s me, Perez!” Perez gives a far better performance than you might expect. His work here is, at the very least, on par with Paris Hilton’s performance in House of Wax.

Or maybe the killer is … someone else!

Honestly, if you’ve ever seen a slasher movie before, you’ll guess who the killer is. Most Likely To Die does offer up a typical, last-minute slasher movie twist but it won’t take you by surprise. In fact, there’s really nothing surprising about Most Likely To Die. That said, for fans of the slasher genre, Most Likely To Die is entertaining and fairly well-done. It doesn’t redefine the genre but it’s well-acted, the house is a creepy location, the murders are properly gory and mean-spirited, and the film does what it does with a certain panache. If you’re a horror fan, there are worse (and, it should be noted, definitely better) ways to waste your time.

Most Likely To Die made its premiere at Film4 FrightFest in 2015 and it had a very limited release earlier this year. It’s now available on Netflix, where it can be watched by anyone with 80 minutes to kill.