Kept Woman

2015
Written by Doug Barber and James Taylor Phillips
Directed by Michel Poulette

Kept Woman is loony Lifetime insanity with a scary dose of all-too-close to being ripped from the headlines. While Kept Woman isn’t based on a true story, it’s inspired by real events, but then gets a looking glass twist that incorporates the scary world of Men’s Rights Activists. Some spoilers below.

Newlyweds Jessica and Evan Crowder (Courtney Ford and Andrew W. Walker) have a bad experience in the city, including getting robbed, and then coming home to find an armed robber in their apartment. This is enough to scare Jessica into demanding a house in the suburbs. But thanks to them being young and poor, the only thing they can afford is way way way out there, meaning Evan has a hellacious commute and barely gets to see his wife, who now works at home doing graphic design. They maxed out their savings on the place, leading to fights over money and the lack of quality family time. Worse of all, Jessica’s fear of the city and wanting to live somewhere safer put her right next door to someone far more dangerous than some random guy with a gun who wants drug money.

Shaun Benson breathes life into the creepy Simon, fleshing him out as a master manipulator who belief in his own superiority and place as a patriarchal god becomes his undoing. To the outside, Simon comes off as a reclusive hipster dork who has flashes of creepiness while trying to be nice. Those bits of creepy words turn out to be oozing from the cracks of his facade, and the creep monster underneath is a frightening beast capable of dishing out mental and physical torture while holding a carrot for those that willingly fall in line with his brainwashing.

I think that “POLICE” label needs to be bigger. BIGGER!