Lifetime
Lifetime is infamous for its movies of wildly different qualities. One night we get the amazingly excellent Taken at a Basketball Game, and the next we get dreck like Playing with Fire, a movie that insults the intelligence of anyone who watches it.
Playing with Fire stars Kirsten Comerford as Natalie Collins, a nurse who is working extra shifts to help her husband Loughlin (Brett Geddes) finish up his degree. She loves him but there is one teeny, tiny problem — a younger classmate of his has a crush on him even though she knows he’s married. Loughlin insists there is nothing to worry about, and after her shift Natalie gets ready for bed and Loughlin goes off to class … leaving the burner on the stove turned on. While in the bath — and for some reason the director decided to show us mysterious soapy footprints leading to the tub without any indication of who they belong to — the smoke alarm goes off and Natalie has to quickly dress and climb out of a second story window (it also seems to be suggesting she has a fear of heights as she sloooooooowly climbs out onto the roof). The fire department arrives and rescues her, and we can see that the entire interior of the house is engulfed in flames. Both floors! And later Natalie tells her friend Alesha that a few walls have to be replaced and there is some smoke damage. Flames were coming out of the roof! And the fire department determines the stove was left on, which we saw, and a dish rag caught on fire. There was no dish rag near the flame but was someone in the house who left soapy footprints outside of the bathroom? That’s not important enough for the movie to explain. And poor Loughlin takes the blame even though he is certain he didn’t leave the stove on or leave a dishrag next to the burner (and it really is unclear who left the stove on).
Natalie and Loughlin move in with Alesha temporarily, and Loughlin decides now is the best time to tell Natalie that the woman in his class kissed him. That does not go over well, even though he assures her he did nothing to invite the kiss. Loughlin is the whipping boy of this movie. Natalie makes him sleep on the couch. The next day Alesha decides that she and Nat should make cookies to take to the firemen who rescued her and ‘saved’ her house, and she reluctantly agrees. Natalie is introduced to Jack and Alesha immediately has the hots for another fireman so he makes it known that Natalie should go chat with Jack somewhere else. They have a cordial conversation which leads to Jack suggesting that there is an apartment available to sublet in his building and he can help them get in so she doesn’t have to impose on her friend. It all goes through and Jack helps Natalie and Loughlin carry in their bags, but Loughlin gets a creepy vibe from Jack. And he’s not wrong because somehow Jack has small cameras all over the apartment (and apparently the entire building — and the question needs to be asked how can a fireman afford this luxury apartment and all that tech?), apparently hidden in places like doorknobs and electrical outlets (at least that’s what the director wants us to think) … so, yeah, Loughlin was right to think Jack is a creep, but because Natalie is so upset with him about his classmate, she doesn’t want to hear it and thinks Jack is just a good neighbor. Things begin to escalate between Natalie and Loughlin to the point she goes back to stay with Alesha — who keeps insisting they visit the fire station even after Jack shows up unannounced at her house just so she can fawn all over her fireman. None of Jack’s suspicious behavior bothers Natalie but it does make the captain wary, and after she confronts him about Natalie … he murders her. And that never becomes a major plot point moving forward. And then Alesha’s house goes up in flames — and this time we see Jack doing it in an attempt to frame Loughlin (whose voice he also recreated with AI and then hacked into his email and social media account to lure the classmate to the bar in the apartment building with the voice message so Jack could take a picture and send it to Natalie) — and that makes us wonder if Jack set Natalie’s house on fire, but did he even know Natalie then? Has he been stalking her since she reminds him of his ex? Who knows, because none of it makes any sense. So will Natalie finally realize Jack is a stalker, and will Loughlin live to say ‘I told you so’?
Lifetime
Playing with Fire has got to be one of the dumbest movies Lifetime has broadcast, and there have been some doozies of dumbness. The screenplay by Caroline Portu seems to have been constructed Mad Libs style, or perhaps a bunch of people wrote down ideas on slips of paper and she drew them out of a hat to just put them together in the most nonsensical, illogical way possible. And Alexandre Carrière’s direction doesn’t help, seemingly just photographing what was on the page without any attempt to give the audience an explanation of what is happening. Who left those soapy footprints in the house? Natalie? Then why are they going in to the bathroom instead of out? How did the fire start? Did Loughlin really leave the burner on or was there someone else in the house? Doesn’t the fire department do background checks, because Loughlin easily found the retraining order against Jack from his ex because of the physical abuse. Is this Rebecca really dead? Why is Alesha the worst best friend in the history of movie best friends, only thinking about herself and offering little in the way of advice and never once thinking Jack was a bit off? Why was the captain’s murder not a bigger deal at the firehouse (and it looks like some detectives are arriving at the station in a long shot but nothing comes of it)?!? Why is Natalie so oblivious to Jack’s behavior, including the burn that required her attention at the hospital? How did a house totally engulfed in flames only suffer what sounds to be minor damage? There would have been water damage to the furniture and clothing that might have survived but from the looks of the fire, that house would have been gutted. When Alesha’s house is on fire, could the firemen move any slower at the station? This movie seriously insults the intelligence of anyone who watches it.
The cast does the best with what they’re given. Comerford really has nowhere to go with Natalie. The character is supposed to be intelligent but she puts more faith in the words of a virtual stranger than she does her own husband. She’s really just there to say the words and get paid. Stephen Adekolu is a bit of a stiff, but he does manage to bring some nuances to Jack mainly through his facial expressions, putting on a friendly face for Natalie that quickly goes to threatening as he puts more of his plans into action. At one point he looks totally insane (during a fight with Loughlin) and if they ever do another Candyman movie, he’d be the perfect replacement for Tony Todd. Brett Geddes also gives a decent performance but he’s saddled with dialogue that makes his character frustrating, and he’s put into situations that he has to try to explain and convince others that he’s right about Jack. He also has no outlet for his own frustrations, no one to talk to besides Natalie, and he doesn’t even try to talk to Alesha about his belief about Jack. You have to feel sorry for him as an actor to be stuck with such a role. Shanna Armogan is also one-note as Alesha. She’s nothing but the horny friend who is pretending to be concerned about Natalie — and never offers any support in the situation with Loughlin — using the fire to get herself some action from the hot fireman she’s set her sights on. Shannon McDonough’s captain, Mandy, is the only person who seems concerned about Jack’s behavior, so it’s a shame she’s bumped off so quickly and is nearly a disposable character.
Playing with Fire is dumb. It’s not even dumb in a fun way that you can laugh at it with friends because it’s more infuriating than so bad it’s good. You’re playing with fire if you watch this movie because the only thing you get is a few brain cells burned away.
Playing with Fire has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-PG.