DEATH SHE WROTE
Canada, 2021, 87 minutes, Colour.
Samora Smallwood, Paula Brancati, Emmanuel Kabongo, Michelle Rambharose, Kaleb Alexander, Rachael Crawford, Will Bowes.
Directed by Sharon Lewis.
This is a pastime television movie. It is directed more particularly to a female audience with the central characters and issues.
In the film, Misery, we saw what the number one fan can do to us stalked and victim author. It is the same here. We are introduced to a very successful popular novelist (her reading at the book store is a text which is a touch banal). However, she has a huge following, or lining up for book signing.
In the line is an eager young woman, talking fast, looking earnest, immediately suspicious. So, it is quite a surprise when the authors agent, who is leaving to start a family, thinks that this young woman, awkward with a touch of adulation at her turn at getting a book signing, wants to be the new assistant. For the audience, she looks immediately to suspicious. However, she gets a trial run, ingratiate herself with the author who becomes dependent on her. She is one of these busy young woman whom nothing is a trouble.
She begins to intervene with the author’s life, going out with her nephew who is wary of her and her googles her and finds that she has been previously directed because of stalking a professor. And a mysterious young man keeps turning up trying to contact her – she knocks over the nephew in her car and is hospitalised, offscreen she murders the young man. Then she turns her attention to the authors boyfriend, about to propose. She interferes with the author’s phone, sending false messages, working on the author’s website, all kinds of promotions.
Crisis arises when the author decides not to continue her series, especially because the heroine is stranded under threat, and decides to write a memoir instead. This is too much for the young woman who begins to intervene, terrorising the author, a subsonic hum in her office, pills, falls messages to the fiance, turning up to meet the fiance’s parents, their drinking, liking her, and then the turning up, creating a situation.
It all comes to a head, the fiance learning the truth about her, confronting her and – rather upsetting for the audience wanting a happy ending – the fiance is killed.
When the former agent visits, and the author has been tied up, there is a final confrontation. Later, we see the author publishing her memoir which her assistant had vehemently and violently opposed, signing books and happy enough to kill off her threatened heroine and not worry about the response of the fans!
Rather expected characters and developments – but a pastime entertainment.
