Christ almighty, is this some incompetent filmmaking. I suspect Rajiv Whabi is a huge fan of Doris Wishman for all the wrong reasons. Kinky sexual themes? Bizarre psychodrama? Preposterous high-concept premises? Nah. Throw all that shit away and keep the bad voice dubbing, the long awkward pauses, and the terminally dull pacing. I haven't read the story by Lawrence Block that was adapted for the screenplay, but having read some of his other work, I suspect that Whabi and Sara Beinat butchered it. Further evidence is the existence of a more watchable adaptation using the original title, "When This Man Dies," as an episode of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents reboot in 1987.

Lauren Nieuwland does as little as possible to portray Julie, a young woman struggling to succeed in The Big City as a realtor. She and her friend Alex (Sofia Asir) have platinum tastes and copper bank accounts. While they discuss fashion over wine, Alex predicts that next season's big trend will be "coats." That's her whole prediction. Nothing specific like "faux mink" or "vintage Parisian." Just "coats." So I assume the season she's talking about is winter.

The first half hour mostly consists of Julie failing to sell any of her properties. She sits wistfully in parks and stares longingly into clothing store windows. Her boss reminds her that she hasn't closed a single deal in six months. By now it feels like we've watched that entire six months in real time. Whabi gets to the fucking point a few minutes before the halfway mark. Julie receives a cryptic email: "If something happens to Augustus Neville, you will receive $4000."

Julie doesn't know the guy, but a web search reveals he's an artist with an upcoming exhibit. After that revelation, we get treated to the spectacle of Julie sucking at her job for another fifteen minutes. Then she goes to the exhibit and learns that Neville has died. The next day she receives an envelope containing $4,000 in cash. We're finally at the meat of the story, and the movie presents it in the dullest way possible.

She eventually gets a second email promising $10,000 if something happens to Patricia Ronson. Julie finds a phone listing for her, but hangs up when the apparently alive Ronson answers a call. Regardless, Julie spends the next few minutes scouring the web for any indication that the woman who just answered her phone is already dead.

At this point Whabi notices there's only fifteen minutes of runtime left. He starts lumbering toward the conclusion, but still finds time to give Nieuwland a musical number out of nowhere. If it doesn't beat around the bush, it's not Whabi. By the time we get to the plot twist, I had already used the movie's voluminous downtime to think of a better one. The Hitchcock version definitely benefited from being shorter and more faithful to the original story.

There's a bit of homage in the first act when we see a copy of Block's Everybody Dies in Julie's apartment. The only way to save this movie would have been if Julie had stopped everything else she was doing and just read the book out loud for an hour. Preferably facing away from the camera so we don't get distracted by her out-of-sync lip movements.

3 out of 10.

Seen on Tubi.