Strictly Confidential review

In terms of the clumsiest, would-be salacious thrillers of 2024, Strictly Confidential is vying neck and neck with Mea Culpa. The edge might still go to Tyler Perry’s laughable erotic disaster, but it’s not for lack of effort from anyone involved with this ill-advised drama.

A group of friends’ annual summer break gets horribly derailed with a tragedy. With little warning, Rebecca (Lauren McQueen), wanders into the ocean leaving nothing but a note apologizing for her actions to her best friend, Mia (Georgia Lock). A year later, Rebecca’s mother, Lily (Elizabeth Hurley), encourages the group to continue the tradition and return to the beach house.

Rebecca’s sister, Jemma (Genevieve Gaunt), naturally made the trek. As does Rebecca’s boyfriend Will (Max Parker), Natasha (Pear Chiravara), Mia’s ex, James (Freddie Thorp) and Mia. This reunion is weird and more than a little awkward. The gang hasn’t been together since Rebecca’s suicide and reuniting doesn’t feel so good.

Damian Hurley, the son of co-star Elizabeth Hurley, writes and directs this attempted thriller. The film is long on wide pan shots, eerie musical selections, shaky performances and a questionable payoff.

Mia keeps having daydreams/nightmares of Rebecca’s final moments. She’s feeling guilty for not being there for her best friend when Rebecca needed her most. Turns out there’s plenty of guilt to be shared by everyone with plot twists that most soap opera writers would decry as too ludicrous to be believable.

Elizabeth Hurley gets the film’s raciest scene, which felt weird to watch play out considering her son is shooting it. That’s after realizing Elizabeth Hurley won’t appear in any scene without a seriously plunging neckline. And Damian Hurley has no qualms of zooming the camera in tight for a close up. If it’s possible to have secondhand embarrassment for a mother and son, Strictly Confidential makes it a reality.

Damian Hurley crafted the script almost as if he assumed viewers have never watched a cut-rate starter kit Lifetime thriller. Character agendas and secrets are telegraphed so clearly that it seems like a swerve. There’s no way Hurley could find these scenes to be subtle, right? It’s simply a means to throw off viewers. Nope. Most of the subplots play out as obvious as they appear.

Some of that is due to the cast who fail to bring any nuance to their characters. This is a case where a more skilled cast could fill in Hurley’s narrative gaps by subtly giving some depth outside of the broad strokes they’re given.

Instead, the cast perform like they’re friends acting out a boxed murder mystery game and they’re waiting to reveal their characters’ secrets. At least they have the decency to hide their character note cards.

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Lock delivers a solid performance despite Hurley writing Mia as an overly emotional mess. Mia’s grief is understandable, but Hurley wanted Lock to go heavy on the lip quivering, sad puppy on the verge of crying eyes in nearly every scene.

This isn’t made any better by Hurley’s insistence on using the most needlessly melodramatic score. That unintentionally makes Strictly Confidential come off more like a parody of the mystery quasi-erotic thriller than anything else.  Mia’s encounter with a random dude (Llyrio Boateng) on the beach seems like it’s supposed to go somewhere, but it’s a pointless subplot.

McQueen offers the film’s best performance, which is ironic since she has the least amount of screen time. Gaunt is also a reliable performer. It felt like Hurley could have ditched the ensemble and focus the story on Lock, McQueen and Gaunt’s characters.

To his credit, Hurley does craft an almost passable twist in the final act. Of course, then it goes spectacularly off the rails quickly losing any earned goodwill.

Strictly Confidential needs to be buried deep in a file cabinet never to be opened up again. Too many performances are uneven or just bad. The underwhelming soap opera writing is too predictable, and the score is used to prop up the drama.

Rating: 2 out of 10

Photo Credit: Lionsgate