Fanatic (2019)
(On TV, October 2022) Please note than in discussing this 2019 made-for-TV film Fanatic, we are not talking about the 2019 John Travolta vehicle The Fanatic, nor the 2017 made-for-TV film FANatic about a stalker taking on a Science Fiction series star. No, this BET-broadcast made-for-TV thriller is about an unbalanced woman who kidnaps a hip-hop star years after a one-night stand left her wanting more. Given that this happens on tour, much of the film also focuses on the star’s wife as she goes around a strange new city tracking down where her husband disappeared. (There are a few other murders in the story, but they’re not really important.) Denyce Lawton plays the deranged woman (inevitably, a sordid back-story eventually comes up, although we’re not really meant to feel that sorry for her) while Hosea Chanchez plays the music star and spends most of the film restrained while Michelle Mitchenor plays the more active reporter-turned-wife who turns Maryland upside down in looking for her disappeared husband. If you’ve seen anything remotely in the same subgenre, you probably know what to expect, and the low-budget production values don’t put much of a gloss on everything else. I did like the slightly unusual aspect of someone investigating in a city they’re not familiar with, even if this largely turns out to be a justification for a character having hidden justifications for being unhelpful. There’s an incredibly lazy coda that should have been left out—it’s not as if anyone will ever be asking for a sequel. The actresses look good, but that’s not nearly enough, especially when a bit of ambiguous depth to the characters is suggested but not explored—in fact, the added complexity works against the film in how it makes it less fun (and more misogynistic) that it would have been had it stuck to strictly Manichean characterization. In the pantheon of black-cast made-for-TV thrillers, Fanatic is watchable, but barely—it’s simply not fun, and there are many equally terrible low-end thrillers that are a great deal more entertaining to watch.