I'm King of the Asylum!

You've probably heard of a movie called Titanic. It won a few Oscars, earned a little bit of cash, gave the world more Billy Zane, and just might have made 8th-grade-Emily cry a few teenage tears. 

The odds are lower that you ever bothered to check out 2010's Titanic 2. 

What, you didn't know they made a sequel?

The beauty of history is that it can't be trademarked, so legally, there was nothing stopping The Asylum from its title (heck, it's the name of the BOAT, see?). Shockingly, I, like most of humankind, have also not seen Titanic 2, but it takes more than Tubi ads to stop me from checking out its 654th entry!

Wait...they didn't make 666 Titanic movies? They just decided to call Titanic 3 Titanic 666? 

HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING?

Quick Plot: 110 years after the ill-fated voyage of a certain big boat, some ad wizard came up with a very dumb idea: let's do it again! 

Titanic 3 sets sail under the dutiful care of Captain Rhoades. Also on board: a gaggle of influencers, some original Titanic artifacts (because THAT'S what you want to see on a luxury cruise) and the bloodthirsty descendent of the ship's doomed captain. What could possibly go wrong?

As you might guess, a lot! Ghosts, icebergs, and of course, bargain bin CGI that makes you realize those powerpoint presentations you've been cutting and pasting with watermarked Google image searches aren't so bad after all!

When it comes to The Asylum Studios' output, you're likely getting one of two things: lazy filmed-in-a-week greenscreen slobber with a goofy title or concept, or a simple micro-budget genre flick that makes a valiant but doomed effort to create an actual movie. I've never seen a GREAT Asylum film, but I've watched my share of passable to GOOD ones (said with an enthusiastic, surprising tone that sounds like I'm shouting a question). 

So where does Titanic 666 land? To use an apt visual metaphor, I'd say it's capsizing quickly towards the greenscreen slobber. Its setup is perfectly fine, but there's just no OOMPH to the actual action. Save for a tragically underused Annalynne McCord (more on her later), the performances are disappointingly bland. Any sinking ship thriller should at least have the sense to give us the broad ensemble strokes so we have some sense of place and doom when the horror is going down, but Titanic 666 just kind of drifts from moment to the next. It's not shocking when you assume a movie like this was written/storyboarded/filmed/edited in less time than it took Celine Dion to record the dance mix of My Heart Will Go On, but you know, it would just be nice to still be entertained. 

High Points

When five minutes in, Annalynne McCord switches from human voice to influencer vocal fry and it's the perfect sign of how much she knows exactly what she's doing. Say what you will about the um, spoken word poet with a very clear theory on Vladimir Putin's experiences with his mother, but you know what? Girl can serve this type of ridiculous character like no one else. She has impeccable timing for this kind of role, and even manages to convince you there's an actual person underneath the filter. 

Low Points 

(the SPOILER EDITION)

So then Titanic 666 has the nerve to kill her in the first act? And no, this isn't a Drew Barrymore-arguable-cameo-in-Scream situation. The movie opens its story as if Mia will be one of many Poseidon-ish team leads, and just ... disposes of her without nearly enough fanfare. It's a shame not only because McCord is so much fun in the role, but also because no other character comes close to registering as either likable or enjoyably hatable 

Lessons Learned

Mediums and cosplayers demand extra security

If you're going to display valuable 100 year old artifacts on a vessel filled with thousands of (often drunk) civilians, maybe it would be worth another $10 to put them behind locked glass

State of the art engines do not overheat

Rent/Bury/Buy

Nobody goes into Titanic 666 expecting to be scared or impressed, but it would have been nice to have been slightly more entertained. I've seen far worse from the Asylum, but aside from this movie's concept and the all-too-brief antics of McCord, there's just not much to remember about Titanic 666...other than the fact that someone made a movie called Titanic 666. 

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.