Hell Hath Nothing On AnnaLynne McCord

Sometimes, you see cover art on Amazon Prime and feel a warm, comfy feeling that someone out there knows what you like: elevated Lifetime thrillers about dramatically angry women taking control of their lives. Then you look closer and see the cast involves Billy Zane, AnnaLynne McCord, and Spartacus's Viva Bianca and you wonder if you're actually dead because folks, Scorned...Scorned is heaven.

Quick Plot: We open a very cheap way of showing a text conversation between two hip abbreviations-using cheaters as they discuss their next meetup. Next, we meet the man on the end of it and yes, it's none other than Billy Zane tied to a chair.

Zane is Kevin, a wealthy gentleman with an incredibly active libido. 28 hours before his capture, his girlfriend Sadie (the glorious, never restrained McCord) was predicting his marriage proposal over shots with her best friend Jen. If you haven't guessed by now, Jen happened to be the other woman on that fateful text chain, she with the "magical pussy" and use of "U"s.

After some lakeside lovemaking, Sadie discovers the affair via Kevin's phone. Lucky for her, she's packed a generous supply of Vicodin despite this just being a weekend getaway. Having disabled the former Demon Knight with surprising ease, Sadie lures Jen and her Yorkie puppy Bootsie to their remote mansion for a wild evening of teeth pulling, shin hobbling, taco eating, and so much more.

I'm not going to tease anything here: Scorned is a ridiculous good time.

Emphasis on ridiculous.

Directed by Doll's House royalty Mark Jones (he of the first Leprechaun and the one and only Rumplestilskin) with a script cowritten by Sadie Katz, Scorned understands its Eat-Your-Heart-Out-Lifetime place and GOES for it. Is Sadie faster than The Flash? Sure! Do we get Billy Zane attempting to foot call the police? HELL YES. Even the music choices seem tongue-in-your-cheek clever, which makes perfect sense if you watch the credits long enough to see that Jones wrote most of the lyrics. 

This is the kind of movie that has a character try to get even by shouting, "you flat-chested whore!" One where two women can be lifelong best friends and yet somehow one doesn't really seem to know anything about the fact that her BFF was committed to a mental hospital and given electric shock therapy for seven years. Size 0 Sadie drinks 3/4 of a full bottle of Maker's Mark and is not only still standing, but has the ability to kidnap two people, make a full dinner, blind her boyfriend, and plot an elaborate escape plan by picking up an escaped prisoner at just the right time.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that.

Throughout Scorned, there are a few probably filmed-in-one-day asides where we discover a heavily tattooed violent criminal is on the run (Checkhov's Law of Prisons in full force). Naturally, we're constantly waiting for him to show up at just the wrong time, a deus ex machina in a film that's already skirting any rules. The way Scorned works this into the main plot is even better than I could have imagined. 

As much as the "b*thces be crazy" subgenre pioneered by Lifetime can be insulting to women, Scorned manages to elevate it into something that might even be empowering. There are no boiled bunnies to be found here, even if there's a constant threat of little Bootsie drying off in the microwave. That's not Scorned's game: Sadie IS crazy, but she's not stupid, and there's something about her determination that's almost, dare I say it, admirable. Not all heroines wear capes: some of them just sport rainbow hair and spaghetti straps.

High Points

AnnaLynne McCord probably doesn't have the A-list career she initially dreamed of, but it's clear that she's become a genuinely interesting actress who makes a point of choosing roles where she can let loose. She's on fire in Scorned, and it's a damn beautiful thing to watch

Low Points

I actually love the yes-they-went-there ending, but if you sit back and try to put the details together, there are a LOT of holes in Sadie's plan

Lessons Learned

Girls put up with a lot of things before they lock you in

The key to making good tacos is cover up crappy meat with tons of spices

You know someone's a villain when she feeds a dog chili

Cigars are less likely to give you cancer than cigarettes, at least according to the Book of Zane

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you're a fan of fun trash, Scorned is an absolute delight. Get your fix on Amazon Prime now. 

Vay-Slay-tion...eh, it's vacation; I can't be bothered to make a clever title

There are a lot of options when it comes to choosing a vacation plan. Too bad most are simply one-way tickets taking you straight into horror movie hell. 

Examine:

Cabin In the Woods

Sometimes you just want to get away from it all, snuggle into a flannel and tap into your inner woodsy hermit. Too bad this usually ends in zombification, skin-rotting disease, sexual abuse via forestry or genital mutilation. What, you think Evil Dead, Cabin Fever, and Lars Von Trier's Antichrist are exceptions to the rule?

Athletic Excursions

Most of us prefer to exercise our alcohol tolerance during a vacation, but there are the bizarre few who escape to foreign lands in order to best be active. Serves these physical overachievers right for encountering such horrors. Robert Fuest's 1970 chiller, And Soon the Darkness, follows two fit young women exploring the French countryside via bicycle, working their legs so much that it becomes impossible to run away from the mysterious menace hunting their ten-speed path. Similarly, the kickass girl group at the center of The Descent could be enjoying leisure tours of the Appalachian Mountains, but sadly, the only thing they learned from Deliverance was that a sleeveless red leather jacket looks good in the wilderness.

Snowy Escape

If you're like me, you see the sweltering heat of summer as a preview of hell, making a winter getaway in June as close as you'll come to the pearly gates. It makes perfect sense for the Norwegian med students to snowmobile their way through Dead Snow while on a school break; it's just a shame their drinking games get interrupted by Nazi zombies. Things could be worse. They could be fighting their own flesh and blood, much like the ill-fated parents of The Children, another winter-break horror that ends in doom.

Island Adventure

Because you know how much directors like the contrast of blood on snow, you wise up and hit the sand somewhere safe where no real-life horror can ever find you. Of course what you get instead is generally a supernatural menace thirsting for your suntanned flesh. Look to Lucio Fulci’s Zombie for a pair of innocent (just slightly nude) scuba divers thrown into an undead infested Caribbean paradise. And no, don’t assume you’re safe just because you already survived a harrowing horror movie fate. Poor Sheriff Tiler has to rebattle the titular Jack Frost in the 2000 sequel to the world’s greatest film about a killer snowman. Yes, there’s a killer snowman in the tropics. Don’t think too hard. You’re on vacation.

Cruisin

As long as you’re immune to seasickness, why wouldn’t you hop on board a cruise ship? Live music, shuffleboard, and daily all-you-can-eat buffet trips...What’s the catch? Nothing really. Just the minor inconvenience of being stalked and slaughtered by a tall dude with a machete (if, of course, you’re referring to the first 3/4 of Jason Takes Manhattan). Rather keep your itinerary in your own hands? It’s hardly safer, at least if you’re weak to the charms of Billy Zane (and who isn’t?). That’s the lesson learned by Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman in 1989’s Dead Calm, and unless you plan on having sex with a psychopath and aiming a bow and arrow at your beloved pooch, I advise you observe it carefully.

Road Trip Fun

See America the way Henry Ford intended with a cross-country road trip accompanied by hours of I Spy. One can only cycle through 99 Bottles of Beer On the Wall so many times before the  need for a new adventure rises, at which point there are plenty of inbred cannibals (Wrong Turn), possessed mannequins (Tourist Trap) and dysfunctional psychotic families (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) waiting to make your vacation a little more memorable.

The Zane of My Exiztenze

Children of the 21st century, gather around my flatscreen yule log as we tiptoe back in time to a simpler period of cinema history, when super heroes wore tights and Tales From the Crypt went Hollywood. Only in this era (known by common folk as the mid-90s) could one thick-voiced thespian with a shiny bald head and constant scowl head a major summer release in purple spandex. It saddens me to reminisce, but thinking about the slipping career of the mangod that is Billy Zane gives me one more reason to doubt the order of evolution.

Browsing through the horror catalogue of the NY Public Library, I came upon a recent DVD starring le Zane (oooh, that’s good) and Stephen Baldwin (oooh, that’s bad), featuring crop circles (hmm, that might be good) that "unleash unfathomable terror" upon a “close-knit group” (I’ll stop reading the back of the box now). The description is lacking, but let’s face it: there’s no way I’m turning down a Billy Zane vs. aliens flick, especially in these dark ages where such a vehicle seems so inexplicably hard to find.


If IMDB is to be trusted, Silent Warnings was filmed in under twelve days, so I can't be too hard on it. C'mon. It takes more time to celebrate Kwanza or grease Zane into his Phantom costume. I'll tread lightly on this little Belgium-filmed thriller, which comes close to creating genuine suspense before terribly rendered Nintendo 64 quality CGI chokes up the final act.


Quick Plot: We open with PC Baldwin (post-Christian) given far too much free reign to improvise a one-man survivalist video diary as an unseen menace attacks his farmhouse. It's amazing how badly this former addict plays a man taking a few drinks, but at least he seems to be having a good time firing a shotgun and chatting up an almost Onibaba-esque scarecrow (that movie really did stay with me, eh?). It’s the kind of performance that makes Will Smith’s meet-cute mannequin scene of I Am Legend look Oscar worthy.


Minor Spoiler: Despite being blown up before the title, Baldwin maintains top billing in the credits, possibly to keep his devoted fans watching or more likely to make the rest of us frightened that his hamminess will return (this was in the horror section, after all). Thankfully, the film moves on to introduce a better/saner young cast as they make their way to renovate the late Baldwin’s abandoned home. Boring mini melodramas follow as Shyamalanian crop circles pop up in the surrounding cornfields. Sheriff Billy Zane (seemingly sleeping off a major hangover for most of filming) offers little help but lots of cool as tension builds in and around the house over a week and a half.

Yes, a week and a half. I know this because the movie insists on title cards that tell you the days of the week. This makes sense for a movie like The Shining, where the progression of time is key, but in Silent Warnings, showing us that it’s Wednesday just serves as a reminder that nothing happened on Tuesday and Lost is on tonight.


The young actors work hard, and while their characters are fairly forgettable, the effort is admirable. There’s the mysterious girl who has never seen a cow (but is not an alien), the black guy who makes wise cracks, the jock to add aggression, his psychic girlfriend to get naked, and a blonde suffering from a severely elongated torso that renders every one of her tops to stop about four inches above her waist (or maybe the budget didn't allow for adult sized clothing; it’s unclear). A.J. Buckley has a nice presence as Layne, the thoughtful group leader and cousin to the late Baldwin's wacked out farmer. There's far too much downtime, but I'll give director Christian McIntire credit for creating non-obnoxious young characters who don't make me want to invite Jason Voorhees over for a stereotype scavenger hunt.

Eventually, the monsters are revealed and much like the 2002 twisty extraterrestrial thriller it blatantly rips off, Silent Warnings comes to a rubber burning halt. I enjoyed Signs for its steady build of eerie tension, but all of my uneasiness was laughed away at the full-frame shot of the video game refugee with big eyes. Silent Warnings magnifies the mistake with villainous aliens so fake you can count the pixels. It’s a shame, too. Once Baldwin is gone and the Zane wakes up, you actually start to care about the cast for the final attack to have some depth.


High Points
An excellent soundtrack creates some major intensity, particularly towards the climax


Any project that keeps Stephen Baldwin busy means less television appearances and Jesus rants for the rest of us


The image of Billy Zane facing evil intergalactic monsters makes me feel warm inside


Low Points
The actual aliens make the CGI attacks of Shark Attack 3: Megladon look positively Spielbergian

Providing no explanation of the invasion doesn’t necessarily hurt the film, but an attempt might have at least distanced Silent Warnings another inch away from Signs


Lessons Learned
Telling someone “you ain’t got no character” is a great way to make your friends laugh for five minutes


Just because a woman says you’re attractive does not give you permission to peep on her as she undresses next door


The Flanders were right: iron is good for you

Letter jackets worn by 30+ year old actors playing young twentysomethings makes said actors look far older


Winning Line
“I love you. I love your body. That’s the truth.”
This is said to a beautiful young topless woman who is insecure around her athletic boyfriend because she’s not, like, a cheerleader or like, the cheerleader type. Firstly, are cheerleaders still considered the hot holy grails of male college loins? And more importantly, is “not a cheerleader type” code for brunette?


Rent/Bury/Buy
This is above average Sci-Fi Channel fodder that is far better than it really has any right to be. That being said, one watch is most likely more than enough for most genre fans. Unless you’re sorely missing the once ubiquitous film presence of Master Zane and worry that he didn’t sign the right line for Titanic residuals, stick Silent Warnings somewhere on your Netflix queue or wait for a random cable airing and turn off the lights.