DARK ANGEL

US, 2018, 88 minutes, Colour.
Annalise Basso, Jason Priestley, Kelly Rutherford, Jason Cermak, James Rittingeer.
Directed by Paul Shapiro.

This is a second part of a trilogy of films for television based on the Casteel series of novels written by V.C .Andrews. It has a brief running time – a challenge to contain all the characters and ingredients of the novel under 90 minutes. Many of the fans of the novel were not impressed.

In the trilogy, the first of the films, Heaven, a young character is introduced, played by Annalise Basso. She has been brought up in the backwoods, a harsh kind of life. In this episode, she is summoned by her grandmother, who did not know she existed, to visit her. The grandmother, played in an extremely haughty style by Kelly Rutherford, has been married to a wealthy businessman, Tony Tatterton, played by Jason Priestley in an extraordinarily stiff performance, uttering his dialogue generally as if he were declaiming. The other main character in the story is Toni’s younger brother, Troy (Jason Cermak), a designer of toys for the business.

Heaven adapts very quickly to the affluent life, is sent to a prestigious school where she is mocked but achieves, over-achieves. Forbidden to see Tony’s brother, she does so, in a quite seductive manner, beginning a sexual relationship. This grows when her grandmother and Tony go on a luxury cruise. She claims to be 16, then 18.

Then the lurid aspects appear, the fact that Tony is in fact her father, seduced by her mother, which means that Troy is an uncle. And, there is more, though presented briefly and rather confusingly for the non-initiated, of her return to the backwoods, encountering her father, with memories of brutality, brothers, boyfriend of the time, and an abusive Reverend.

A curiosity item, an introduction to the themes of the novels of prolific writer V.C.Andrews (while not pleasing her fans).