Single Black Female (2022)

(On TV, October 2022) Ah! Made-for-TV thrillers—one of my many weaknesses. No, they’re not good. Low-budget, low-polish, low-brow… and yet they’re often high fun. Lifetime film Single Black Female is different in that it doesn’t go the psycho-male route but instead takes the less-travelled psycho-female route. The results are largely the same: trusted person becomes worst nightmare, starts assaulting and killing pets and people, and has to be put down definitively by the end of the film. As the title clearly suggests, it’s a race-flipped take on Single White Female, except with enough different bits of business to not completely ape the previous film. (The larger plot is the same, but it’s also the same as countless other thrillers that don’t bother citing their influences.)  Here, an up-and-coming TV personality gets an assistant who looks a lot like her, and brings her into her life before realizing that she’s not exactly the most level-headed confidante. It’s fair to expect that newcomer to have a secret and a grudge, both of which are revealed as the film goes on. As for the third act, well, you know what to expect: screaming, stabbing, and death. So, you have to look elsewhere for the fun of the film. For instance, there’s something refreshingly different in having both female co-leads (Amber Riley and Raven Goodwin, eerily similar thanks to great casting) being plus-sized without this ever becoming a plot point—in fact, both of them are clearly presented as being attractive. But let’s be honest: we’re here for the over-the-top violent melodrama and that’s where the film delivers. It’s hilarious to read some shill-like online reviews of the film seriously maintaining that this is a film “Everyone can relate to”—so you too are a TV star with a psychotic assistant that beheads people because of a long-buried family scandal? OK, cool, I must be living a sheltered existence. But that bonkers quality helps Single Black Female remain watchable throughout—the bad staging, the quick escalation of threats and violence, and the spectacularly dumb characters are what make the film worth a look, not necessarily its slapdash qualities. As far as made-for-TV thrillers go, Single Black Female is acceptable trash—it’s not that gloriously over the top (despite beheading—at least they tried) but it’s much better than other movies that take themselves too seriously. There are hints that director Shari L. Carpenter is aware of what she’s doing and the constraints she has to work with, and the result is just disreputable enough to be interesting.