Last night I ended up watching two Lifetime TV-movies, including the "world premiere" of something called "Under the Bed," which turned out to be exactly that: Callie Monroe (Hallie New), a globe-trotting newscaster whose proudest achievement is having scaled Mount Kilimanjaro (she begins to sound like the Julia Roberts character in Eat, Pray, Love), has just broken up with fiancé Brad Volger (Ryan O'Nan) even though she'd already bought the wedding dress and sent out invitations to the ceremony. What she doesn't know — though we do — is that somehow she has attracted a stalker (Pat Healy) who, not content to follow her around throughout her life routine, has managed to ensconce himself inside her home and is literally living under her bed, occasionally emerging when she's not at home to take a mysterious bite out of an apple in her fruit bowl or drink some of her smoothie, which seems to be his only way of sustaining himself since he's never shown actually leaving except, on occasion, to follow her around. He's also filming her entire life on his smartphone, and writer/director Daniel Myrick (whose most famous previous credit is "The Blair Witch Project," another story involving eavesdropping and amateur video) spends virtually the entire movie cutting between normally filmed footage involving her regular life and Jerkicam footage supposedly representing the video her stalker is taking of her. While all this is going on Callie is working on a freelance news article about a prominent politician who's having an affair, and she's also dealing with the aftermath of her breakup with Brad by chatting online with a mystery admirer (whose avatar is an owl) who is, of course, her stalker. She also goes ahead with a birthday party she had planned while she and Brad were still "an item." The basic problem with this movie is that, even though the credits claim it was "Inspired by a True Story," the whole idea of two people interacting in a confined space with one of them being unaware that the other is there is a more suitable premise for comedy than drama. Indeed, at one point I was laughing my head off at a sequence Myrick clearly intended as heart-stopping horror! "Under the Bed" isn't even one of those Lifetime movies that overcomes a fundamentally silly premise; the fundamentally silly premise is so risible (even if it was "inspired" by something that really happened!) that for all Myrick's clear skill at shocking the audience (albeit hampered by his film being shown on a commercial cable channel and his mood-building constantly being interrupted by the commercials — maybe this film would play more like what Myrick clearly intended on a big screen with no breaks), it's hard to keep yourself from laughing during its running time!
Review of Under the Bed
