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Some movies are so bad, you just feel awful for wasting that precious time when you could have been doing anything else. Some movies are so bad that you can’t stop watching, like a trainwreck. Some are so bad that they’re unintentionally hilarious, making the time wasted at least come with a few laughs. Lifetime Movie Network’s latest thriller, My Husband’s Other Face, is a combination of all three, leaving you with a ‘what the heck did I just watch’ reaction.
My Husband’s Other Face focuses on married couple Nicole and Jim. When we first meet Nicole, however, she is tied to a chair with tape across her mouth. How did she get in such a predicament? Two weeks earlier Nicole found out she was pregnant but seemed distraught as she comes home from the hospital, nearly having an accident in her car that is clearly not moving. The next days she’s accosted by her neighbor looking for her young daughter … except the daughter is grown and lives in New York and the neighbor, Nelly, suffers from occasional memory loss/dementia after suffering a stroke and Nicole always seems to be the one she comes to with her imagined concerns (she has a caretaker who seems lousy at her job). In her own house, her husband Jim is struggling to finish three chapters of a novel that need to be submitted, but he’s full of self-doubt. He’s also curious as to where Nicole has been, and when she tells him ‘the mall’, he snaps and says she’s lying. The pressure of the book is getting to him. Nicole just wants their relationship to be like it was so she offers to read what he’s written and offer some feedback … and in her mind that seems to mean reading what he’s written and then completely rewrite his work … which he submits and is told it’s the best thing he’s ever written, which only contributes to his self-doubt and anger at Nicole for doing what she did (looks like she got him back for that ‘those who can write, write, and those who can’t, criticize’ line).
Fearful that her marriage is falling apart while dealing with a pregnancy, Nicole confides in her work friend Kara who suggests she go see some old woman down the lane who can help her with her romantic problems. Nicole figures things can’t get worse and when she gets there, Agnes snatches money from her hand and tells Nicole to sit down, do herself a favor and drink some tea. She tells Nicole to close her eyes and listen to her voice, describe the reason she’s there, and when she does Agnes gives her eye-drops. Two in each eye and her husband will see her like he used to see her and their relationship will be fine. Nicole goes home and puts the drops in Jim’s eyes WHILE HE’S SLEEPING — I’m sorry but if someone was prying my eyelids open while I was asleep I wouldn’t be asleep anymore — and the next day he’s up and making her breakfast and all seems well. With that seemingly resolved, Nicole now has to contend with some romantic advances from co-worker Stuart, who thinks she deserves better than Jim. She and Jim are also confronted again by Nelly, who makes a comment about Jim’s face not being his, and at a work party Nicole’s boss Juliette decides now is the best time to reveal that she and Jim have been having an affair, but that guy she brought to the party is a dime store replacement. Stuart and Nicole are the only two people who see Jim as Jim … but Stuart has never met him before so why is everyone else acting weird? Things go completely off the rails when Nicole discovers someone is gaslighting her in order to steal her baby, but who is and isn’t in on this wackadoodle plan? And why isn’t Jim’s spell check working on his computer?!
My Husband’s Other Face — aka Controlling My Husband, a title that is completely misleading since Nicole is the one being controlled so it was wisely changed — is one of the most bonkers movies I’ve yet encountered on Lifetime or LMN. The whole plot is centered around someone wanting to steal a baby, but they’re going to keep up this ruse for nine months?! It all gets very Rosemary’s Baby with Agnes’ hypno tea replacing the tanis root the old neighbor lady gives Rosemary, but sadly — and this would have made things even more bonkers and fun — there is no demonic cult involved in the attempted babynapping. Just a couple who apparently can’t have their own and don’t know about adoption (or can’t because the man most likely has a criminal record). The entire story is absurd and head-scratching, and perhaps writer Thomas Ambrosini needs to stick to the lighter romances he wrote before attempting to go into darker territory with his fourth screenplay. Director Ben Meyerson has a resumé that includes a lot of these types of thriller and does the best he can with the material — and cast — he was given.
Speaking of that cast … we’ll give Brooke Burfitt and Braxton Angle some praise for their performances. Burfitt manages to make Nicole balanced and confused as everyone else around her acts odd. She’s only constricted by the script which forces Nicole to just shrug everything off, but finally giving her some strength to confront Juliette. Angle also has to portray Jim as two different people, but again, his actions are dictated by the script which finally does give us a reason, however outlandish it may be, for Nicole’s constant compliance with whatever Jim tells her to do (like drink more tea). Even Mike Boland as Stuart is fine because he is not caught up in the madness so his feelings for Nicole are based in the reality of her situation (although having him show up at her house during the climactic moment is just another creaky plot device).
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As for the rest of the cast … the scenery must have been made out of cake and cookies because everyone is chewing it up, and not in a good way. Courtney Elvira’s Kara is totally off-putting to the point you have to wonder how Nicole could be friends with her. Her body language is weird, her line delivery screams ‘I’M BEHIND ALL THIS’ but Nicole is never allowed to think she’s anything other than a concerned friend (only Stuart can see through her). Every time she was on screen, I just imagined Kara was being played by Miranda Sings because that is exactly who Elvira reminded me of, minus the voice (casting Miranda Sings as Kara wouldn’t have made this all that much more bonkers). But who is to blame her her performance? Elvira’s lack of skill (this is just her fourth feature and apparently first with a sizeable role) or the director who was unable to guide her (or who just didn’t care)? No one, however, tops the line delivery of Dana Anderwald as Juliette. The first time she addresses Nicole to ask her to come to her office, her response to Nicole saying she isn’t busy is a very odd delivery of the word ‘lovely’. Who says that in a response to ‘Are you busy?’ She continues to deliver her lines in the most stilted manner from ‘don’t worry, I’m not firing you’ to ‘I’m sleeping with your husband’. She is so bad that I’m a bit obsessed with her. Is she like this in all of her films, or is this again another case of the director just not giving a f**k? There must be something about her the casting directors like with 25 previous performances and a whopping eleven upcoming projects!
Other one scene actors also deliver bafflingly amateurish performances that make it feel like everyone is in on this plan to gaslight Nicole, from Denise Gossett’s Dr. Greenberg (who attends to Nicole after she falls off a chair and hits her head) to Rae-Shan Naté Barclift’s Orbelina (yes, that is the name writer Ambrosini came up with), the caretaker who loses Nelly, to the cop (John Squires) who arrives at Juliette’s house after Nicole goes to confront her. Sheila Ball goes a bit over-the-top as Nelly, Donna Gafford is fine in her once scene as Agnes, and Stephen Lamar Lewis is also not bad in his role but it would be too spoilery to reveal anything about his character (but if you squint you can see a slight resemblance to Angle).
My Husband’s Other Face is bad, plain and simple, but it’s almost so bad it’s good. Almost. You certainly can’t take any of it seriously because it would just be maddening to do so before the reveal of what is actually going on. It would be a great movie to watch with a group of friends while having a few drinks, and there is most likely a drinking game to be had like taking a drink every time someone tells Nicole to drink more tea. It really is a weird, bizarre movie that is unwatchable and watchable at the same time.
My Husband’s Other Face has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
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