TUBI ORIGINAL: Deadly Secrets of a Cam Girl (2023)

Arianna (Stephanie Sanchez) is in college for business by day and a cam girl by night, raising the money that she needs for round the clock care for the sister injured in a car crash that she caused, one that also ruined the friendship she once had with India (Si Chen). Yes, a lot has happened before this movie even gets started.

There are a lot of lonely hearts that try to connect with Arianna on the site Faces for Sex. She’s also some kind of super hacker, able to not only triangulate where the IP addresses of where people are jerking off to her, but threatening them with blackmail of $1000 if they don’t want their wives to find out. Somehow this makes her the heroine of this story.

However, she soon gets close to one of her regulars, a female voice that reveals that she owns a tech company called Neuranx and if she can share her life with Arianna, she’ll pay her $2,000 a minute. One assumes this is way better than working for tips and domming guys on a cam site. In a few days, she has over $60,000 and feels like life is turning around. If you’ve watched enough Lifetime movies, you know that now is when this secret woman is about to be taken out.

Yes, the secret woman is Olivia X (Olivia Day), the co-owner of Neuranx with her husband Ryan (Chase Anderson). After Detective Choi (Kurt Yue) barely listens to her claiming she watched Olivia get attacked and dragged away, Arianna decides to go apply for a job there, as if she were Halle Berry in Perfect Stranger. Lana (Christie Leverette) sees through her fake resume, but she’s also sleeping with Ryan and just may want to escape the strangeness of this company. And maybe Olivia really isn’t gone but more Gone Girl.

Nearly every man in this movie other than the police officer is scum, including Professor Edwards (David Arrow). While Arianna is literally a hacker beyond anybody in our reality, she’s also dumb enough to reveal her secret online identity of Angel to everyone who shouldn’t know it, from the Professor to Ryan to probably even her insane sister (I have no idea how a car accident makes you flip out because someone won’t play chess with you, but I’ve learned to just go with what these movies give me).

Director Jason Winn and writer Jackie Logsted (Rush for Your Life) have adapted one of my favorite movie-isms here. Instead of the exotic dancer heroine who never gets naked or the sex worker who never has sex, we now get the cam girl who keeps mostly clothed and even takes off her mask like Tim Burton Batman and by that I mean at the worst times when talking to the worst people who should not know who she is under that disguise.

Also: My wife came downstairs in the middle of this, saw the title and shot me the look. So yeah, I got in as much trouble for watching this as I would have for watching Emanuelle In America. This movie is no Joe D’Amato, so the level of annoyance from her was not worth the dearth of depravity that I was given in this film. I’m not expecting a snuff orgy — only D’Amato would randomly drop that on you in a movie you’re watching on Cinemax when you’re 15 and you go from early puberty charged up to suddenly freaked out — but if you’re going to get me in trouble make it worth it.

You can watch this on Tubi.