Deadly Delusion
Stars: Haylie Duff & Teri Polo
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Synopsis (via Lifetime)
Hoping for a fresh start, Julia, a troubled New York woman, moves to Los Angeles with her new boyfriend. After settling into a fancy new home though, mysterious things begin to happen. It’s not long before Julia becomes convinced that her demons have moved with her.
Thoughts
Haylie Duff (The kween of Lifetime Movie Network) is back at it again playing a woman in peril! This time with MORE lip fillers. The opening scene is literally her running from a man and the cops won’t help her. Turns out to be a dream, of course, and she has a melt down on a plane talking to her therapist on a laptop in the bathroom….. On an airplane?
Shane and Julia are moving to an LA for a fresh start! They have a beautiful new house (with terrible glass furniture and a broken banister.) and a blue car all courtesy of Arthur (The Canadian realtor, who is friendly but also creepy.) We find out Julia has been on suicide watch for the past few month., The first thing she asks is if her pictures arrived and then goes to look at them. (Her parents passed away or were MURDERED, maybe causing this paranoia?)
Next, we get an actual sex scene! (I’ve been only watching Hallmark, so I was kind of like… what is happening?) During their trist, Julia thinks she sees a man in the window and has a meltdown. After the all clear from Shane, Julia goes into the living room and watches old videos of her parents while drinking wine. (Which really made me want wine, I see what you’re doing LMN.)
Later in a bubble bath, while drinking wine (LMN stop!), Julia thinks she hears someone in the house and grabs a scissors and sneaks around her house in a towel. The TV is on and a snake is in the sink! When the building manager arrives, he says there is no snake… could it be a deadly delusion???
Julia goes to lunch with her friend Annie. Julia is distracted and a terrible lunch date, so Annie suggests they “destress.” I was expecting a shopping montage, but they instead go to the shooting range and then look at guns on a rooftop. Annie encourages Julia to get a gun because LA can kill you.
After another meltdown, Julia and Shane get out the laptop and talk to the therapist. (Who is ALWAYS in her office?) The therapist makes her say “The shadow men are not real” a couple times and she is better???
On the mend, Julia goes to get a freelance job and is disappointed when it is for an orange juice ad. She is even more disappointed when she arrives back home to finds Annie in a towel. (Her buildings water is “out”) while Shane is making dinner and margaritas. Are they having an affair or is it a deadly delusion…
While taking pictures for the orange juice ads, a glass pane falls on Julia’s head and she gets concussed. In the hospital she accuses Annie or hooking up with Shane.
“Do you want to come over for dinner, drinks, and sex in our shower?”
Julia is at a paranoia high! She is convinced that Arthur is behind all of this. (I mean he IS creepy/Canadian!) When she confronts him at his real estate office, she gets even more proof that he is behind everything. The office has NO PRINTER, price tags on the furniture, and an employee was working with his monitor off. Shane talks her down and admits that they didn’t switch the medication she is on, Julia in on her old medication and everyone tricked her into thinking she was on new one. (This would make me extremely paranoid, but she mellows out.)
The paranoia doesn’t stay away for long. Julia break back into the real estate office and finds a surveillance room where there is video of her house! The next day she apologizes to Annie, who forgives her and tells her she left her a gun in the bathroom. Then Julia makes Shane go with her confront Arthur again. This time the screens only show the parking lot of the office, not the house.
Back at home Julia is literally tearing at the walls looking for cables to the camera in the AC vents. She does find them, but Shane AGAIN talks her out of it.
Turns out Julia’s delusions weren’t delusions at all, but you know they were still deadly. She shoots the man who has been following her and realizes that Shane is in on the whole thing. Apparently it is some sort of live stream for rich men who like to watch her losing it and you know having sex? Shane was working with his boss and Arthur to run this exploitation of Julia.
Julia has to kill Shane before he kills her. Annie calls the cops on the boss and Arthur and they are taken away.
We then get the classic LMN twist where all is revealed and the horror is not over. We see the therapist pimping out another mental patient who is being tricked into a exploitative relationship for men to watch on screens around the world.
Side Note
Why would the therapist agree to do this, and why does she get so much pleasure out of doing this?
Also known as The Lease
Overall rating
(2 Knives)
🍷🍷🍷(3 glasses of wine required)
*Photo Credit: © 2017 Lifetime
I enjoyed the movie, was different than I expected. But the one part I wish they would change, have the therapist get busted and arrested. Love Haylie Duff movies. She needed more backbone in the movie to show she believed in herself and was determined to bust they bad guys.