Love Sick Love 2012 - REVIEW

Life has thrown me some curve balls lately, as it often does, so I've fallen pretty far behind on reviews and on movie watching in general. I'm doing my best to catch up so just hang in there with me and we'll get back to normal pretty soon, well as normal as we get around here at Twisted Central.

Dori (Katia Winter) wants nothing more than to be with Norman (Matthew Settle) a commitment phobic business man who's only interested in one thing. After getting some relationship tips from a book she decides to get Norman alone in an isolated country house so she can profess her undying love. When he doesn't reciprocate, she forces him to live through every holiday of the year, in one weekend, to prove they are the perfect couple. With no help in sight, Norman struggles to free himself from the chains that bind him, literally, before what started as a romantic weekend alone turns into something much darker and sadistic. 

If you take the films Fatal Attraction, Misery and The Loved Ones and mix them all together, you'll end up with something probably a lot more interesting than Love Sick Love. What started out as a seemingly character driven story, falls flat pretty quickly. The things that made the characters interesting in the beginning got lost somewhere on their drive to the country, I guess. I'm not really sure. While I can see the direction that this film was trying to take, it just never got there. I have no doubt their intentions were good but  writer Ryan Oxford and director Christian Charles simply tried to do too much. The premise is easy enough... a pissed off woman seeks revenge on the man that wronged her... but with each plot point/twist the entire story just caved in on itself and it became a muddled mess. What it lacked in tension, it made up for in predictability. 

The cast did the best they could with the script they were given but at times it seemed that even they were growing weary of ridiculous dialogue they were forced to deliver and the even more ridiculous situations their characters were thrust into. There wasn't a single moment in the entire film that I took any of the characters seriously. I didn't buy Winter as a psycho nut job who takes men out to the country to "make" them love her. I didn't find Dori menacing or scary or diabolical in any way. Settle somewhat passes for a sex crazed business man but can you really feel sorry for a man like that? I didn't. I actually had a hard time liking ANY of these people. 

Ultimately, I'm not even sure how to categorize Love Sick Love. There's very little in the way of blood and gore so it's definitely not horror. To call it a thriller would be stretching it. It takes a couple of stabs at being a dark comedy but pretty much fails to find that niche too. If you're in the mood to watch a film about a vindictive woman, I'd suggest looking up the aforementioned films. This one is likely to leave you questioning why you even bothered wasting the energy to put it in the DVD player or your time watching it.