Me You Madness

Stars: Louise Linton, Ed Westwick, Shuya Chang

Director: Louise Linton

There are some films that are so bad they're almost good, some that are enjoyably bad and some that are so bad as to be just plain awful. Regrettably, actress Linton's writing and directing debut falls into the third category. The fact that Linton cannot act, having given herself the star role in this misbegotten vanity project, is almost the least of her film's problems.

It's impossible, for example, to reconcile the billionaire businesswoman with the airhead shopaholic, though they are one and the same. To cap it all, the character of Catherine Blake, played by Linton as high camp, is also a female Hannibal Lecter, a serial killer who chops up her victims and stores them in a huge freezer, cooking the tastier bits in casseroles for invited guests.

Into her sprawling, glass-walled mansion steps crooked wheeler-dealer Tyler (UK's Westwick with a thick American accent), the latest prospective victim, with whom she falls in (sort-of) love. Told to get the hell out of there before she changes her mind about dispatching him, Tyler rewards her by driving off in her prized red sports car. 'Huh,' pouts Catherine, before plotting revenge. 'And I allowed him to touch my lady bits.' Yes, she wrote this as well, and some of her line readings are wincingly bad.

Both characters begin pointlessly addressing the camera. 'We can't both break the fourth wall,' complains Linton. 'This is my movie.' And she's welcome to a film that, before the end, and like its characters, goes completely (stylised) bananas.

David Quinlan

USA 2021. UK Distributor: STX Entertainment. Colour (unspecified).
98 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 0, Swearing 2.

Review date: 14 Apr 2021