How Dumb Can a Thriller Be?

Picture yourself after being hit by a car. You wake up in a hospital bruised and battered, with big gaps in your memory. Your foot is damaged and you can't walk without assistance when you're released because it's painful and difficult.

So when the husband you don't remember brings you home to the enormous house you don't remember, and says that you can sleep in the guestroom on the first floor, you of course insist on sleeping in your bedroom up a double flight of stairs, right? You obviously need the challenge, and you "don't want to be any trouble."

That's the case even though you don't know your way around, you don't have crutches (standard issue in a situation like this), but you did get a measly little cane which barely supports you when you try to walk and which you keep dropping.

You haven't made any attempt to contact your friends at work or any other friends while you've been in the hospital. And even though you can't seem to get internet service at home, you don't really question your husband about these missing colleagues and friends—and he never mentions anyone. You just let it slide.

Trying to jog your memory, you study a photo album where you notice that the hair on the back of your husband's head in a mirror is a different color than the rest of his hair. Of course you're only mildly puzzled since you've never heard of Photoshop.

When you finally discover that your husband isn't who he claims to be, you crisscross the extravagant kitchen multiple times in your attempts to escape (and make a phone call) and while doing so, you avoid picking up anything that could be a weapon. You just hobble back and forth and don't bother grabbing a knife, a weighty meat tenderizer, a pot or a pan.

Why? Because you're an idiot. Because you're a heroine in a film that gives "femjep" a bad name.

You're not the only idiot on screen. Think of all the characters who know there’s a serial killer on the loose but walk into their apartments or homes without turning on a single light. Or see their front door open and walk in anyway. Or wake up when they hear a noise downstairs and call out, “Is somebody there? Who’s there?”

Or even worse, the detective who figures out that there's something fishy about someone and goes to their house alone. No call for backup. An ex-cop I interviewed for mystery series recently told me that this is one of the most frustrating things he sees on TV and in films: cops going cowboy. "It doesn't happen," he said.

But it has to happen in films written by people who think the audience is too dumb to know better.

The story above is from a Netflix film titled Secret Obsession which is only about ninety minutes long, but it's a black hole of stupidity. There's a pretty house to ogle and the leads have nice hair, but that's about the best it can offer. Don't waste your time, unless you enjoy yelling at characters who just can't seem to do anything right.

Lev Raphael’s novel of suspense is Assault With a Deadly Lie and he’s the author of twenty-six other books in many genres. He was the long-time crime fiction reviewer for The Detroit Free Press and a frequent panelist and moderator at mystery conferences from California to Oxford University.