Twice Bitten (2021)

(On TV, November 2021) Aw yeah — pandemic lockdown oblige, I’ve become a bit of a BET romantic comedy addict in the last few months and now I’m turning into something of a BET thriller addict as well. To be clear, they are not very good movies: bluntly written and perfunctorily directed, they’re low-budget films that use big plot strings and even bigger emotional levers in the hope of thrilling their viewers. But they can amount to right-sized trash in the right circumstances, and Twice Bitten is adequate in its chosen niche. The plot revolves around an irresistible conman (Kevin A. Walton, with swagger to match the part) who targets rich women for substantial payouts, pretending to be a real-estate mogul and getting them to invest (via check) before disappearing. But he’s not a particularly good conman, as demonstrated by relying on a single source for marks, operating in a too-small area, calling his next target from the current woman’s bathroom, and getting stabby in a hurry whenever things don’t turn his way. Meanwhile, we’ve got our heroine (LisaRaye McCoy) slowly getting suspicious that something is not right, and teaming up with his past victim to trap him. There are complications, many of them ludicrous: a common acquaintance (whom I initially took as a family member) linking the victims, a supporting character just happening to live next to the conman, and a murder to abruptly raise the stakes. Shot in Los Angeles, Twice Bitten moves from one implausibly high-end location to another, but that’s part of the fantasy being shown here: Attractive people, murder, danger and suspense. That the script doesn’t sustain scrutiny in its thriller mechanics isn’t all that much of a slam because Twice Bitten delivers on what viewers can expect: a simple, slightly trashy suspense film scratching at the audience’s anxieties and delivering an upbeat finale. (Well, except for that character who died, may her sacrifice not have been in vain.)  Director Patricia Cuffie-Jones could have used a better script and a larger budget, but she delivers what BET was expecting here — undemanding but satisfying low-end thrills.