That’s what I was planning to end with. I didn’t want to waste that last line. After taking some time to let it sit in my mind, though, I pass on F*** Marry Kill. The plot held my interest enough to keep watching, and I was genuinely curious to find out what happens. This is an attractive cast, including the men, and Virginia Gardner, one of my favorite movie stars, is billed as the second lead. I’ve watched all of her projects since the fall.
The lead star is Lucy Hale. I’ve never seen Pretty Little Liars, but I know her from Which Brings Me to You, a streaming romantic comedy-drama that dropped earlier this year. She plays Eva, who just turned 30, who is single after an eight-year relationship with Jake, a local cop. She works as an assistant to her best friend Kelly (Gardner), a photographer. One of Eva’s friends hooks her up on a dating app. Meanwhile, there’s a killer on the loose, going around town murdering women on their first dates.
Director: Laura Murphy
Writers: Ivan Diaz, Dan Scheinkman, Meghan Brown
Stars: Lucy Hale, Virginia Gardner, Brooke Nevin
The hosts of Mark My Murder, a true crime podcast that everyone listens to obsessively, call this person the Swipe Right Killer. Several potential clues throughout the film point to the SRK being one of three men Eva hooks up with and starts dating. They include Mitch (a waiter and restaurant owner), Norman (who installs a security system in Eva’s house), and her former classmate Kyle. I inevitably thought of the recent Netflix movie Woman of the Hour, where Anna Kendrick is a contestant on The Dating Game and one of the three bachelors on the show is a serial killer. Incidentally, Jedidiah Goodacre, who plays Kyle, appeared as Bachelor #2 on Woman of the Hour.
Unsurprisingly, they take us down paths, but most of them have been a misunderstanding. The right-swiping killer has a weakness for rose wine (Kyle is a fan), never leaves fingerprints (Mitch has blank, featureless fingertips, due to burning his fingers so many times on the job), and wears size 10 shoes, like all three of them. There are times when I could be any one of them. Despite being R-rated, F*** Marry Kill is never scary or tense, but the actors sell the story enough to keep me hooked. Despite being a comedy, there are more jokes that don't work than those that do, but I did laugh a few times. Lucy Hale is one of the most appealing female rom-com leads in the industry right now. As for the legendary Virginia Gardner, if you like her, she's worth a watch. Turns out she's more involved than your typical one-or-two-scene movie best friend.
The killer’s reveal, of course, is accompanied by a lengthy monologue where all the motives, reasoning, procedures, and logistical details are specifically detailed. There’s a conscious reference to this afterwards: “I got a big speech from the killer. Can you believe it?” The explanation is a bit convoluted, but not overly so. I hesitated, but ultimately came to the conclusion that there’s enough here to make me not regret watching F*** Marry Kill, the worst good movie of the year. I wouldn’t marry her and I wouldn’t kill her.
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