Jennifer Williams doesn’t know who she is.
After being hit by a car, she suffers memory loss and can’t quite recall anything about her life. Not her job, her friends or even her husband, Russell. But he remembers her; and he’s determined to see her through her healing, taking her back home to their secluded home in the country.
Perhaps the familiarity will jog her memory, he says. Or even intimacy with him. But nothing seems to help, and as time goes on she begins to piece together a shattered identity—one that starts and ends with the man claiming to be her husband.
We see a husband who is kind and loving toward his wife. A detective works around the clock to solve a case.
None.
In two flashbacks, Jennifer remembers her husband performing oral sex on her; we hear her moan and see her move. In a similar flashback, Jennifer and her husband kiss in bed. He’s shirtless, and she’s wearing a silky nightgown. A husband calls his wife “very sexy.”
A stalker makes it clear that he watched Jennifer for years, hoping that one day he’d be able to force her to love him. This man kisses Jennifer and tries to touch her thigh, insinuating he’d like to have sex. She refuses and he aggressively grips her arm. He also kisses her forehead and shoulder multiple times.
Jennifer runs from a mysterious man who is bent on killing her. As she tries to escape, she’s hit by a car and suffers a punctured lung, broken bones and various scars and bruises. This accident erases much of Jennifer’s memory, but as time goes on she remembers terrifying flashbacks of a man chasing her with a knife.
Later on, Jennifer’s injured foot is chained to a bed. Eventually, her arms are tied to a bed post to keep her from escaping. Her foot is also twisted until she complies with a violent suggestion.
Jennifer believes her parents were killed in a fire, but we find out that they were murdered. (Their rotting, bloodied corpses are briefly glimpsed.) A man’s dead body is found in the trunk of a car. A mass murderer snaps a man’s neck. The murderer also knocks others out with crow bars, rocks and other objects.
Jennifer bites a man’s lip, hits him in the head with a glass vase and, eventually, shoots him twice in the torso. An employer discusses a former male employee who broke a supervisor’s nose in three places.
A detective grieves yearly as he remembers the unsolved case of his daughter, who went missing when she was 10.
God’s name is misused three times, once paired with “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused once. “D–n,” “son of a b–ch,” “h—” and “d–mit” are each heard a few times.
A couple drinks wine at dinner. A stressed detective takes a few pills from an unlabeled bottle of medication.
A male stalker watches his victim, whom he keeps locked in his bedroom, via webcam when he isn’t present.
If you’d like to watch a movie that features multiple story lines that never truly link together, characters who make you want to scream loudly at the television (or maybe the screenwriter), and plot holes you could fly a 747 through, this TV-14 film is for you.
OK, not really.
Honestly, Netflix’s latest buzz-generating effort, starring Mike Vogel and Brenda Song, mostly left me scratching my head regarding this paint-by-numbers thriller. Sure, we get jump scenes galore, which might appeal to adults who like sitting on the edge of their seats. But weird camera angles, unconvincing acting and a plot twist that’s hardly a twist at all left me wondering why Netflix invested money to add this original to their library.
Secret Obsession is not very secret, nor a film anyone’s likely to obsess much over.
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
