34. Review of Netflix's Deadly Illusions (Dir. Anna Elizabeth James, 2021)

When Deadly Illusions popped up on my Netflix feed I added it straight to my watchlist. It sounded right up my street; a thriller drama revolving around an author who finds her life and her fiction blending with one another upon hiring a nanny. 

On paper this sounds like a great premise, however within the first ten minutes I began to regret my decision to watch it.

The acting and dialogue is extremely unrealistic to start with, with key narrative drivers being explained in a very on the nose way rather than leaving the viewer with space to piece the story together. These issues also went hand in hand with the films predictability, as within the first thirty minutes I had guessed the main plot elements which were to come.

The one thing which I would say the film did somewhat well was blurring the line between fiction and reality, but I feel this should have been something which was implemented later into the film, as it already felt unrealistic to start with, meaning that the blur into fiction just meant the film went a little off the rails.

In terms of the characters, I really did not care for any single one of them, and some characters which I felt the film wanted me to care for didn't get enough screen time or character development. The most interesting character overall was probably the Nanny, as I feel she was probably the most fleshed out, but even then it wasn't enough to fully invest me into the story.

Deadly Illusions is not a good film in my opinion, and I would suggest investing your time into something with a little more substance.

Also, SPOILER / CONTENT WARNING:

This film does not present identity disorders in a good light, and it also fetishizes lesbian relationships and portrays a very negative and predatorial stereotype of queer women.