Wood Harris

(On TV, January 2022) I don’t exactly enjoy recognizing writer-director Chris Stokes’ name, nor having a (relatively low) opinion of his cinematic body of work, but the truth is that I’ve been watching a lot of BET original movies lately and he’s one of their go-to directors. After watching no less than six of his films in short order, I can say that he’s not always a bad director, but he doesn’t do very well under budgetary constraints—especially in the more demanding suspense genre. His comedies (Fall Girls, Swag Inc.) are better than his thrillers (Til Death Do Us Part, We Belong Together), where his limits as a screenwriter become more obvious. Still, his work fits well within the BET house brand of thrillers, that is: female-centric suspense films playing with familiar tropes often blended in wild ways. The specifics of the plot, the staging or the dialogue aren’t as important as delivering cheap thrills on a small budget. In this regard, Always and Forever is exactly what BET or BET’s viewers expect from a Stokes film: Attractive female lead put in danger, with a wild “twist” both ludicrous and predictable. The specifics in this instance are that a young lawyer (the beautiful Cynthia Addai-Robinson) finds herself in the middle of a dangerous situation when her childhood friends all start dying in mysterious ways. We, as viewers, having been teased with flashback scenes to her teenage years spent tormenting a pudgy young man, suspect that there’s a revenge story at play. It’s ridiculously easy to guess who’s the bad guy, so I suppose there’s some comfort in knowing where the story is going, despite the supposedly intelligent protagonist not having a clue. It escalates to a familiar place—a moonlit deserted summer camp where she and the killer go head-to-head, with the cavalry (a surprisingly intense Wood Harris) not far behind. Much of Always and Forever is simply preposterous, and that’s well before (and after) the Big Twist we’re not supposed to see coming: characters act in contrived ways more useful to the clunky plotting than anything else. (Such as leaving a gun on the ground so that the villain can then pick it up.)  Weird things only make sense in retrospect when they justify later plot points. Don’t ask questions about what’s not expressly shown on-screen (such as an entire murder trial where you would think a defence lawyer would do their job and expose The Twist) and especially do not ask yourself why the villain would hatch such a convoluted and insanely risky decade-long revenge. “He’s a psycho, that’s why” is an uncommonly frequent justification in the Stokes oeuvre. Still, I am now consciously seeking Stokes movies to watch and there’s got to be a reason for it: he is, for lack of a better word, an interesting filmmaker. His scripts are case studies of what not to do and his direction labours under budgetary constraints. But he’s got an eye for attractive actresses, he delivers wild material without even acknowledging its preposterousness and his movies have this strange mixture of narrative rhythm and plot problems that make them fun to dissect. No wonder I can’t stop watching his movies and writing about them.