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At the time of the broadcast of Lifetime Movie Network’s new ‘Deadly Resolutions’ thriller Dressed to Kill, we were just three days into the new year. I can, with much confidence, say that this is the worst movie you will see this year. It’s also the most unintentionally hilarious movie you will see this year. It will also make any movie fan wonder out loud how on earth they had the gall to use the title of a classic 1980 thriller when the movie’s original title, Killer Fashion, would have been just fine. Because now unsuspecting viewers are going to come into the movie thinking it’s a remake of the classic Brian De Palma movie. This is most definitely not that.
Dressed to Kill centers around a woman named Amy (Brianna Cohen), an assistant to the head of a, ahem, ‘fashion house’ in the town of Shelbyville (Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky … who knows, but definitely not a global fashion hub). Her boss Vanessa (Suzanne Neff) is not the most wonderful person to work for. She despises her own daughter, Blair (Annie Sullivan), because she wants to take the business beyond haute couture, and she has little respect for her employees’ personal lives, namely her top seamstress Wanda (Monanik ‘Moe’ Dugar), who is going through a tumultuous divorce and has gotten a little distracted and sloppy with her work, turning in a garment with an uneven hem. Vanessa tells Amy to fire Wanda — after already having terse words with Blair (who obviously dislikes Amy for being closer to her mother) — but Amy just can’t, and besides she does not have the authority to fire anyone. Vanessa agrees and gives her a promotion so she can fire Wanda — and it does not go well because later that night Vanessa is found dead in her office.
From there the mystery builds. Who could have killed Vanessa? Whoever it was knew the working of the sad little building the shop was in because the security cameras were turned off. Amy’s husband Kevin (Mo Sehgal), who complained about a twisted ankle the night before, is gone when Amy wakes up at 6:00 AM. He claims he went for a run … on a twisted ankle? After Amy gets to the shop and sees Vanessa’s body being wheeled out on a gurney, Wanda appears out of nowhere and accosts Amy, telling her that now that Vanessa is dead she can give her job back. Amy refuses because Wanda is a bit unhinged (and in the same outfit as the day before). What about Blair? Does she have an alibi? Who knows. The police seem focused on Amy for some reason, even though Blair and Wanda have more motives to want Vanessa dead (turns out Vanessa left Amy 90% of the company in a new will filed two weeks earlier than Amy was unaware of, she claims). But they have a fashion show to put on and Amy and designer Julian (Daniel Considine) work to make it happen … but their model in the showstopper dress to close out the ‘show’ (by my count there would have been four outfits shown, none of which screamed ‘haute couture’) is assaulted before she was to walk the ‘runway’ (an aisle down the middle of the shop), and somehow Amy is still the scapegoat for that even though Blair wanted her bestie Clara (Evanthia Theodorou) to walk in that dress (why would Amy sabotage her own show?). Amy tries to smooth things over with Blair by inviting her to dinner at her house — which ends with Amy passing out after one glass of wine (which Kevin blames on her being over-worked and stressed out) — and before you know it, someone has also killed Clara and assaulted Blair in the shop … and of course the cameras were turned off again. Blair has the cops search Amy’s house — and Amy happens to find Vanessa’s inhaler in a drawer in her bathroom before the cops do … how did that get there? — and she still remains the prime suspect despite the three others waving giant red flags. Amy is determined to solve this case on her own to clear her name, and Kevin suddenly becomes supportive and accompanies her to the shop (which is closed because it’s a crime scene, so she’s just making things worse for herself especially after Kevin suggests turning off the cameras), and all the suspects now just happen to all be in the same place at the same time. Can Amy solve the crimes before she becomes another victim?
On paper, this is actually not a bad mystery because even though it should be fairly obvious who the killer is, the story does just enough to keep us guessing (even though the writers, Amy Irons and Miriam Lyapin, try a little too hard to make those herrings redder than they need to be while the actors’ performances are less than subtle in their attempts to misdirect you). Where this all fails is in how the police just focus on Amy as the killer. They never seem to question Kevin to confirm that she was home at the time of the killings (except for the one time he can’t confirm she was home). Of course, Kevin is always conveniently out when a killing occurs, including the night Clara and Blair were attacked, having supposedly driven for hours (?) to their favorite restaurant to pick up food, which would have given Amy enough time to get to the shop, kill Clara, assault Blair (and why wouldn’t she also kill Blair as well if it was her?), and get back home. None of it makes any sense. There’s also the question of Wanda, who shows up at key moments throughout the story — in the SAME OUTFIT she was wearing when she was fired. The script tries to explain this by suggesting Wanda was squatting in the shop, but only Amy sees the evidence of this so perhaps she wasn’t, so why did she not change clothes during the week or two that the story takes place? Or months, maybe. We have no sense of time because the director, Lindsay Hartley, doesn’t bother to match her stock footage with what she actually shot on location. One fly-over of the town shows it covered in snow, and the next shot is filled with green grass and either late Fall or early Spring trees, the temperature on Amy’s alarm clock (which also has the ability to disappear and reappear) showing the temperature at 65 degrees. You could almost make a drinking game out of the continuity errors, but you’d be blacked out halfway through the movie. There are many questions that are not answered like why did Amy pass out from the wine? She later sees a prescription bottle that may or may not have been sedatives, so did Kevin drug her? Or was the wine already drugged by Blair? Kevin doesn’t drink, and I’m really not sure if Blair did either even though she had a glass (she seemed more interested in Kevin and Amy drinking the wine). Also, when Amy goes to Blair’s house to confront her, why is Blair wearing a scarf and sunglasses in her house?! Is she cosplaying Little Edie from Gray Gardens? Was that really the best costume for the day? It was ridiculous.
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The cast is a mixed bag. It’s hard to tell if they can act based on what they’re given to work with and a director who seems to have just let them do whatever they wanted with their roles. Cohen is fine as Amy, but the story just makes her a perpetual victim, so she never gets to stand up for herself (the movie could have been titled Gaslight for all that she is put through). Sehgal is never subtle as Mo, always delivering his lines in a tone that says ‘I’m the guilty one’, leaving us to wonder if he is doing all this to help Amy, even though he doesn’t want her becoming a purely work-driven Vanessa Jr. He never sounds believable when he tries to explain his absences. Sullivan seems to be trying really hard to be Kristen Stewart (you can’t deny a resemblance to the Twilight-era Stewart), but she also overacts both when she’s being shady and pretending to be friendly with Amy. Dugar shouts most of her lines and appears insane the way she just pops up out of nowhere (like when she appeared at the fashion show, glaring at Amy, and somehow no one else saw her there). Neff does play Vanessa as a total beyotch, skillfully making the audience root for her demise. Tim Perez-Ross is one of the two inept cops who won’t focus on anyone but Amy. In one moment right after Vanessa is carted away, he startles Amy outside the shop by walking up on her from behind and asks, ‘Hard day?’ Umm, yeah, her boss was just murdered. What the hell?!? The movie could have used more Considine and his silky voice (which sometimes appears to be dubbed, which is weird), considering he’s the lead designer for the House of Silver, so why wasn’t he also a suspect?!?! Too many questions. Oh, and the building used for the House of Silver is just … sad. What was the production designer thinking when they saw this small building at the end of a block with rotting wooden shingles to depict a high end fashion house? And I swear they came close at least twice to describing the fashion industry with the classic Project Runway catchphrase, ‘One day you’re in and the next you’re out’, but that was probably more of an issue than the copycat title (and for the record, movie titles cannot be copyrighted but unless they become a ‘brand’ like Star Wars, you can call your movie whatever you want no matter how egregious).
The movie ends pretty much how you think it does with the obvious killer being revealed — surprise — and the cops apologizing to Amy … who should immediately file a lawsuit against the police department and the town of Shelbyville, Wherever instead of just saying ‘that’s okay.’ No, girl, it’s not okay that you were harassed for days or weeks or months, or at least through two different seasons according to the stock footage. I’m torn on what kind of a rating to give Dressed to Kill. It’s bad, no doubt, but the story does keep you guessing. But the performances and direction are inept. But all the ineptness also makes it wildly entertaining enough to watch with a group of friends and heckle. This is truly Mystery Science Theater 3000 material. The biggest mystery, however, may be why the title was changed. In the end, it’s a hard movie to recommend anyone watch on their own, but at the same time it’s an unintentional hoot that would make for a great ‘So Bad It’s Good’ movie night. I’ll stick with the one-star rating but it’s almost worth three stars … for all the wrong reasons.
Dressed to Kill has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
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