Killer Cove is a 2019 thriller about a woman being terrorized by a stalker who hires and develops a relationship with a handsome private detective.
Let’s get it right out of the way because no doubt, you’ll just skip down to the bottom of this anyway to read the final thoughts and decide your next move. Fear Cove is a bad movie. It’s paper thin, predictable, generic, and about as deep as a thimble half full of vapor. It has no ambitions to be innovative, clings unrelentingly to the obvious, features a bevy of melodramatic performances and is chock full of dialogue at about the first grade level (apologies to all the first graders). Naturally, this makes director Damián Romay‘s independent effort an absolute must see.
Linda Marshall (Haley Webb) is an attractive thirty-something just out of a bad marriage, her angry husband Eric (Jason Alan Smith) wanting her to sell the beachfront house so he can get his fair share. Her best friend Carrie (Cathy Baron) hopes Linda can find someone new too, thinking it’s time for a move to the west coast. Meanwhile, Linda meets a cute private detective named Tony Sorno (Donny Boaz) at a pub, he showing some interest, though she’s not entirely ready. His timing couldn’t be better though when Linda finds herself in a bit of spot when a guy in a black hoodie (Shawn Fitzgibbon) seems to be stalking her (and is just terrible at it). She calls Tony for help when the cops come up empty handed, and sure enough, he puts a hurting on the meddler and plants his flag so to speak as Linda’s protector, soon enough breaking the rules and taking her on dates. Good idea? Well, let’s just say Tony has some rather aggressive methods for keeping his lady safe.
Killer Cove – or Fear Bay as it’s also called – is genuine goofy fun, basically a full-length movie of the week with its tongue jammed deep into its own cheek, a wink and smirk lingering playfully over just about every inconceivable scene. It’s not that it’s wallowing in tropes and clichés because duh, it most certainly is, it’s that it heaps them on board with such irreverence, you almost have to admire its commitment to the absurd. Almost. It’s like watching your younger sister roleplay her favorite dolls based on a cable TV drama she heard in the next room because she wasn’t allowed to watch.
Webb and Boaz don’t have a shred of chemistry, which is too bad since so much relies on their coming together, Webb doing her best with a cardboard cutout character while Boaz barely has a gram of presence on screen, his tousled hair and throaty voice only slipping him further into oblivion. His six pack makes more of an impression than anything out of his mouth. It also doesn’t help in taking any of this seriously with Linda working in the cutthroat world of, um, antiquing, who of course has dreams of being a designer. Containing giggles becomes part of the process.
A police detective named Groves (Owen Miller) is actually the best thing going in all this, the gravelly-voiced actor properly doing the part right, knowing exactly what he’s in and playing it super smooth. The guy makes every moment count, several steps up the rungs with everyone else he shares screentime with. Unfortunately, it’s not really enough to keep it above water, the movie so ridiculous it practically dares you to keep watching. You will feel it taunting you. Heck, it even has a cheap dream fake out and a climax at an abandoned factory. And as such, yes, just for that, it earns full membership into that coveted hall of bad movies that are so bad they become good. Killer Cove is very bad. And oh so good.