Hunting Housewives, on Lifetime

This is not The Most Dangerous Game. These women will not be hunted for sport. They are not the subjects of a contest produced for the pleasure of dark-web viewers either, although Karla Dodds’ husband will rely on techniques he developed as a reality TV producer. He simply wants to kill her and he assumes the husbands of her three friends feel the same way in Marco Deufemia’s Hunting Housewives, which premieres tomorrow night on Lifetime.

Dodds and her three besties, Joli Symons, Sharrell Bouvier, and Rebel Carron-Whitman think they are being whisked away for a weekend getaway at an exclusive, unlisted spa. Instead, her husband paid the pilot to crash their private plane and then hunt down the survivors. He can’t shoot straight, but he can down the plane exactly in the remote area of forest where the arrogantly entitled and menacingly manipulative Mark Dodds set up all his surveillance cameras.

Then the creepy TV guy invites the other three husbands over to watch the drama unfold live, in his man-cave. Evan Whitman is so shocked and violently outraged, Dodds is forced to lock him in the panic room. Andre Bouvier and Jared Symons are also shocked, but they stifle their outrage, so Dodds will not draw his gun on them as well.

Hunting Housewives is no Hard Target or The Hunt. It isn’t even Hunted. Frankly, it doesn’t even fit in the “people-hunting-people” sub-sun-genre. Despite Mark Dodds’ voyeuristic glee, this master plan is not about sport. It is simply a ridiculously overcomplicated murder scheme, probably more befitting a supervillain wearing tights. Seriously, you would think there would be an easier way to go about it.

Of course, we could roll with a dubious premise, if it came with solid action or suspense, but Hunting Housewives has too many execution issues, starting with the fact nobody can even hold a gun in a competent, credible manner. For Denise Richards, this is a step back from credible VOD action work in Altitude (not a great movie, but she helped elevate it).

Richards still delivers all the housewives’s best lines with appropriate attitude. Yet, most of the relatively limited entertainment comes from Mark Ghanime snarling his way through the unlikely scheme. Along with Richards, Kym Johnson Herjavec, Melyssa Ford, and NeNe Leakes serve up plenty of reality-TV-worthy rich housewife sass, which is probably what the target audience is looking for, but that is about it.

Altitude, Starring Dolph Lundgren and Denise Richards

Every hostage negotiator in movies and TV follows the model of Kevin Spacey in The Negotiator. They want to just keep talking and talking. Of course, the show would be over prematurely if they said: “I’m not feeling it here, let’s just send in SWAT.” Needless to say, FBI negotiator Gretchen Blair is a talker, who clashes with her guns-blazin’ boss. That gets her reassigned to a DC desk job, but to get there, she catches a flight loaded with hijackers in Alex Merkin’s Altitude, which airs soon on Charge TV.

Blair will be our John McClane for tonight. She was supposed to start the film in coach, but when she went-off on a gross row-mate, the impressed flight attendant bumped her up to business class. That is where she meets the relentlessly flirty Terry, who first offers to take her to Paris and then offers her a whole lot of money to keep him alive. Much to his alarm, he notices several of his former criminal associates boarding the plane. It turns out they double-crossed him first, but he still got away with all their loot.

Naturally, they want it back and they are perfectly willing to kill all souls aboard to do it. Their leader, Matthew Sharpe, is just the sort of mechanical whiz who has all the necessary skills. His trusted lieutenant Sadie (Terry’s ex) is sufficiently psychotic to make sure it happens. However, they did not anticipate a Fed like Blair being on-board, even though she was forced to check her side arm, after her status was down-graded.

Yes, this is basically another Dolph Lundgren VOD movie, but this time around he plays the villain—and he doesn’t even get much screen time, because rough, tough Sharpe spends most of the film locked in the cockpit. Instead, Denise Richards is the lead. Believe it or not, she makes a pretty engaging action protag, despite the limitations of the script and budget. She shows enough backbone and action cred to make us want to see her get another chance to star in a better constructed Die Hard clone.

The Toybox: When Denise Richards Met Mischa Barton

Right, so the idea of taking a long road trip in a 1970s era RV does not sound miserable enough to you? Okay, lets make it haunted by the ghost of its former owner, a notorious serial killer. Now head out into the desert and kiss your butt goodbye. That is basically what happens in Tom Nagel’s The Toybox (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.

After the death of his ex-wife, Charles gathers his family, two feuding sons, a daughter-in-law, and a young granddaughter for a tour of roadside attractions. It is supposed to be healing. He must have gotten a heck of a deal on the RV. Officially, it is not supposed to exist anymore. Out of respect for the victims’ family’s Robert Gunthry’s so-called “Toy Box” was slated for destruction, but obviously that did not happen.

So, for a while Charles is tooling down the highway, but he stops to pick up Samantha and her soon-to-die brother, whose car broke down along a lonely stretch of nowhere. Soon thereafter, the RV takes on a life of its own, speeding deep into the desert, where it promptly shuts down, leaving them stranded. At that point, Gunthry starts picking them off, either using the RV itself, or with his ghostly bare hands.

Frankly, Gunthry’s inconsistent nature would be annoying, if this film were worth caring about. Is he a proper ghost? Is he somehow embedded in the RV? If so, how does he take on corporeal form? We don’t know and we don’t care.

Arguably, Denise Richards peaked in the late 90s with films like Starship Troopers, while Mischa Barton’s O.C. prime was in the mid aughts, so there was probably never a time when having them together would have caused a lot of excitement. They both look great, but in 2018, this team-up screams direct-to-DVD. Unfortunately, they are both better than this material.

To give credit where its due, Richards convincingly portrays a justifiably worried mother, who almost makes us feel for her plight. Perhaps Greg Violand fares the best, managing to squeeze some tragic dignity out of Papa Bear Charles. Conversely, it gets painfully tiresome listening to the brothers bark at each other.

It is just not a lot of fun watching people see their loved ones die before their eyes. Nagel never gives his characters any hope, so there isn’t any suspense. As if that were not sufficiently depressing, the audience also has to spend time with that tacky 70s era décor. Not recommended, The Toybox opens tomorrow (9/14) in LA, at the Laemmle NoHo 7.