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LMN’s ‘Vicious Valentines’ weekend continues and this weekend’s feature is one that has been eagerly awaited … although maybe for not the best reasons. It’s time for the network to roll out another movie in its ‘The Wrong… ‘ series with Miss Vivica A. Fox herself — The Wrong Baby Daddy. But something crazy has happened after The Wrong Obsession and The Wrong Marriage … this one is actually good. That’s probably the most shocking thing about it (let’s not get it too twisted though because there are still problems, but they aren’t as egregious as in the previous movies we’ve reviewed).
The Wrong Baby Daddy starts out with a woman entering a home and calling for the occupant, but she finds something that causes her to shriek us all the way back to a month earlier. (A lot of these LMN movies seem to start at one point in the present and roll back to a previous time, taking us up to that point again and continuing.) We then pick up a month earlier with a couple having a fight, the woman packing her bags to leave, the man getting so angry he nearly lunges at her, but he then assures her he would never hurt her. Then the woman who we saw screaming, Lila, is having a therapy session, worried about being shallow, questioning her previous relationship to a man named Paul. But did she really love him, or did she just love the lifestyle he provided? After the session, Lila meets up with her friend Robin, who runs an advertising agency, and they talk about Paul — and Robin has no trouble showing her disdain for him — and Lila drops a hint about coming to work for Robin. And then Paul walks in. Lila slips out the back and Robin gets a little sassy with Paul while Lila gets away. The sun sets and the next day Lila is starting her job with Robin, and to show Lila the ropes she enlists the help of Mark, who is the man we saw earlier (but a month later!) having the argument. He is reluctant to take time from his work to be a tour guide, but Robin gives him the eye and he obeys, showing Lila around and joking with her about choosing an office or ending up in the janitor’s closet. While leaving work, Lila has an encounter with her ex — how did he know she would be there? — but before things get too heated, Mark shows up out of nowhere, puts Paul (who does not look like someone accustomed to a lavish lifestyle in the least) in a headlock and makes it clear he should leave Lila alone. Lila is rattled but agrees to go have a drink with her Knight in Shining Armor, and after some chit-chat, they end up hitting the sheets back at his place. Talk about your office indoctrination day.
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From there it becomes a whirlwind romance. Lila tells Robin she’s seeing Mark, Robin doesn’t have a problem since he’s not Lila’s boss but she warns Lila to be careful because … Mark was married for ten years. That’s a red flag? Lila moves in, meets nosy neighbor Debbie (who is for some reason credited as Suzie at the end of the movie, and ‘Nosy Neighbor’ on IMDb) who seems to purposely drop the names of Mark’s ex, Julia, and another ex, Tamara, leaving with a shady ‘feel free to drop by if you ever need anything’ like she knows Mark could be dangerous. About a week later, Lila is not feeling well and learns she’s pregnant. And she starts to question Mark’s commitment to the relationship. He’s got a locked door in his house he refers to as a ‘junk room’. Julia has been seen coming and going from the house. Mark freaks out when Lila tells him she asked Robin to be the godmother of their baby. Debbie leaves a note on Lila’s car — which Mark intercepts but then drops so Lila can find it — telling her to call Tamara. Lila also does not know that Paul was somehow tracking her with his ‘Likin’ the Hikin’ Locator’ app — which managed to lead him to Mark’s house even though Lila was not home … but Mark was and, let’s say Paul never made it out of the house after a surprise encounter with a baseball bat to the back of his head. Debbie also gets a little curious and Mark catches her snooping at the house, and he claims the mailman left her mail there so she should come in and get it. She tries to insist she’ll wait on the porch, but he insists she come inside, and instead of just standing by the door she takes just enough steps in so that Mark can also sneak up behind her and introduce the back of her head to his little friend as well. Lila meets with Tamara, who can tell that Lila is pregnant and reveals to her that’s exactly what Mark wants from her, and that her relationship with him ended because she didn’t want kids. Tamara’s story of the relationship mirrored Lila’s, but once she told him no kids, he went way over-the-top and told her she wasted his time, and he wasn’t even interested in having sex with her anymore. Can you imagine? Tamara leaves Lila with the comment that there’s something not right with the guy. When Tamara leaves the restaurant, she does not see Mark hiding and then following close behind her. Tamara gets home and Mark somehow got there before her and we’ve now hit the one month mark of the story, and that encounter ends with Tamara screaming off camera. Lila goes back to the office and voices her concerns to Robin about what Tamara told her, that Mark just wants to take her baby. Robin tells Lila to pack her things, quickly, and come to her house to be safe. After Lila leaves, Mark shows up acting all shady asking where Lila is, but Robin says she has no idea (I don’t know how she runs her business because the employees just seem to come and go at will). After he leaves, Robin calls Lila and tells her what just happened, and Lila does everything but pack quickly. She notices the mysteriously locked door is now open, and inside she discovers what appears to be a nursery in progress. Then Julia shows up, and Lila tells her to get out of her house, and Julia just laughs at her saying, ‘Your house?’ Mark shows up and seems very angry with Julia and tells her to leave, and assures Lila that he will have the locks changed and file a restraining order against Julia, and that all makes Lila believe Mark is being completely and totally honest with her, and everyone else just has an axe to grind. But all that changes when Lila visits the police station to thank the officer for the restraining order and asks if he needs any more information. The officer is confused because restraining orders are filed at the courthouse and they aren’t just handed out. Lila also visits the county building to look up the record of Mark’s divorce and … there is no record. Lila returns home and notices that Mrs. Kravitz … I mean Debbie, is not at her usual perch on her porch staring at Mark’s house so she goes over to check on her and now we’re all the way back to the beginning of the movie because when Lila shrieks she sees Debbie dead on the floor. And the next thing you know, Mark is chloroforming Lila. She wakes up, hands and feet tied up, sees Mark and Julia, and boy, do they have some news for her — they’re not divorced and Lila is basically just a baby factory for them, and we’re all left to wonder who is the crazier of the two. Neither Mark nor Julia should be entrusted with a child, that’s for sure. But distant police sirens scare off the couple and … One Year Later Lila and her baby are fine and Robin is a doting godmother, offering Lila some sage words — ‘Darling, you just had the wrong baby daddy in your life.’ And she said it without her signature wink! Outrage! But what about Mark? He’s still on the prowl, in San Diego now, luring his next baby-making mark into his trap.
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I have to be really honest here and say The Wrong Baby Daddy is surprisingly good, from the story to the acting to the production value. The previous two ‘The Wrong…’ movies we’ve reviewed felt like the cheapest of the cheap direct-to-video movies with terrible lighting, acting, and continuity errors. Now we get something that is a complete surprise in its quality, and it’s still from the same director, David DeCoteau, who I’ve criticized before due to the amateurish productions (from a very seasoned director, no less). Maybe the production company — or LMN — took note of how cheap the other movies looked and upped the budget, allowing DeCoteau to give this one a more cinematic look despite using the same office set from the other movies with the weird black wall and lighting from below the actors like they’re using flashlights under their faces to tell ghost stories. (I have to note the same office building exterior from the previous movies is also on display, the Orchard Trimble building in North San Jose, although what is supposed to be the lobby — from a completely different building — is also on display but as the county building lobby instead of at Robin’s office.) If nothing else, you have to hand it to DeCoteau and his production team for being unashamed of reusing the same locations for every movie, giving the whole series of films a sort of ‘multi-verse’ feel to them with the stories taking place on different Earths with identical locations and people who all look the same but are also different characters with different occupations. Besides the higher-quality-than-usual production values, the screenplay by Adam Rockoff, Jeffrey Schenck and Peter Sullivan (all of whom have had a hand in previous ‘The Wrong…’ movies) have really upped their game after all working together on LMN’s Christmas thriller Do You Fear What I Fear, giving us a pretty solid story with a decent resolution. Just one question lingers — besides Debbie, what did Mark do with all the other bodies? And how exactly did he manage to drag Debbie back to her house unnoticed?
The Wrong Baby Daddy is also sort of a homecoming gathering of DeCoteau’s stable of actors. Of course Miss Fox is here (she’s now an executive producer and has been in every ‘The Wrong…’ movie), but all of the main cast has had a role in a previous movie, some in the same movie and reunited here (it’s that multi-verse thing at work!), so they all know how DeCoteau works, he knows how they work, and they’ve managed to really bring these characters to life without sounding like they’re just reading their lines. Fox has a pretty substantial role here as Robin — although giving herself top billing when her role is still in the Supporting Actress category is a bit much (perhaps at this point she should get the more prestigious ‘And Vivica A Fox’ credit after the main cast) — but she takes each and every role seriously and it really works in her favor that her character already has a long-standing relationship with the lead so that her interactions with Lila feel more authentic. Ciarra Carter also does a wonderful job as Lila, a character with many layers as she has to reconcile her past relationships with the present, questioning if she is the problem, uncertain of where Mark stands, but making it feel totally believable and reasonable in being more secure with him after he ‘stands up’ to Julia. Most importantly, she is never a victim. She knows her worth and she has a support system with her therapist and Robin to make sure she doesn’t allow herself to just become a man’s property. Matthew Pohlkamp also turns in a nice performance as Mark, able to be equally charming and dangerous, seeming to have genuine love for Lila, always hiding his true intentions. He does seem a little shady when confronting Robin about Lila’s whereabouts later in the movie, but in general he manages to play two sides of Mark with skill.
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Jamie Bernadette is very good as Julia, never giving away the character’s intentions during her early encounters with Lila, and then getting to have some juicy moments in her final scenes, saying all of her lines just dripping with vitriol. Sam Schweikert doesn’t get much to do as Paul except be confrontational, and he really seems miscast, looking more like a young hipster than someone well-off who enjoys a life of luxury (honestly, Lila is way out of his league). Caryn Richman is fun as neighbor Debbie, always trying to say more than what’s she’s saying by using her inflections and expressions. Grisselle Escotto’s scene as Tamara while talking to Lila feels very real and she does a great job bringing the moment to life. Shireen Crutchfield is also good as therapist Dr. Adams, calmly listening to Lila and asking her questions but also pushing Lila to find the answers she needs without Dr. Adams’ input. Vicente Perdomo, who was last seen as an underwear model in The Christmas Campaign (a Vivica A. Fox movie outside of ‘The Wrong…’ movie universe), has a humorous scene as a delivery guy. He’s cute and obviously has talent, so maybe DeCoteau will give him a more substantial role at some point.
Against all reason, everything in The Wrong Baby Daddy, from the production to the story to the cast, actually works like a very well-oiled machine, keeping its secrets close to the vest, the cast rarely acting too obviously over-the-top to alert viewers that something just ain’t right, especially with the character of Mark. We know he’s shady, we know he has no qualms about killing people, but he also manages to make us almost forget all of that when he’s being a nice guy with Lila — until he isn’t. It all just works and now I am actually sort of eager to see what ‘The Wrong…’ universe has in store for us next. Now if they could just fix that lighting issue in the infamous black office. Overall, this one is actually worth a watch, just don’t take it too seriously.
The Wrong Baby Daddy has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
The Wrong Baby Daddy Trailer
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