Deadly Smize

Sure, slashers are fun and zombies bring endless possibility, but is there anything more satisfying than 90 minutes of a perfectly timed crazy lady Lifetime thriller?

Quick Plot: Jennifer Higgins is a successful New York photographer. Over the course of one opening montage, she loses it all, beginning with her very mind. While shooting her younger model boyfriend and seeing him flirt with another woman, Jennifer goes into a manic state, grabbing a knife and swinging wildly. 

One year later, Jennifer has moved to LA to start over. She lands a teaching position at a high school, the perfect hunting ground to find and craft her newest adonis. That comes in the form of nerdy mama's boy David, a shy senior revealed to be a modeling savant.

David is fairly easygoing about his transformation, quickly starting a relationship with fellow geek-turned-Lifetime's Next Top Model Caitlyn. Jennifer is naturally inflamed by his wandering eye, and it doesn't take long for her to craft a diabolical (and hilarious) scheme to photoshop lingerie-clad Caitlyn posing with a porn star and a baseball bat. This being 2018, releasing such not-actually-incriminating-photos to the public destroy the young woman's career.

Note that this comes after Jennifer had already murdered a popular student who made eyes at David and staged it as a suicide AND strangled a rival agent and set it up like a gang murder. Jennifer, you might say, is troubled. 

Directed by the "Stalked By" specialist Doug Campbell, Fatal Fashion (aka Deadly Runway) is pretty much everything you want from a Lifetime obsession-based thriller. Multiple homicide, weirdly modern haircuts, random attempts at high fashion...it's all here, in its truly aggressive glory. 

This is the kind of movie that explains Jennifer’s insanity with a random anecdote about how her college boyfriend died in a car crash while she was taking pictures, hence, her sexual preference was arrested in time and, you know, we got Fatal Fashion. From its loose understanding of human psychology to its positively puritanical view of the modeling industry, this is a stupid good time.

High Points

I'm an easy mark for a ridiculous montage, and Fatal Fashion boasts MULTIPLE of the best type: makeover, picnic first date, and extremely unsexy lovemaking involving mostly clothed people

Low Points

I get that David is supposed to be a malleable boy, but couldn't he have even a bite sized portion of personality?

Lessons Learned

Spanish coffee is for lightweights

The best way to stay under the radar when ordering drinks for your underage boyfriend is to flag the waiter from across the room to shout for two more alcoholic beverages, even though you've just taken a single sip from your first

Sexy modeling is all about showing no emotion

Rent/Bury/Buy

Bless the grounds of Netflix for hosting Fatal Fashion. In no way will this movie make you smarter or deepen your soul, but it's a silly, over the top TV movie at its best. Pour yourself a Spanish coffee, throw on Netflix, and enjoy.