These girls are not having a great Valentine’s Day.
Jadyn (Ella-Rae Smith) has just arrived in London from Atlanta in order to live with her boyfriend Ray (Carl Spencer), who dumps her quickly. She starts a new job at beauty brand GLOW with two girls who may seem mean — Brandi (Cassie Clare) and Alex (Miriam-Teak Lee) — but they all bond over the knowledge that they’ve all recently had breakups.
As they prepare to get revenge on the men, their boss Dominique (Victoria Ekanoye) works hard to be their friend. Yet soon after they get their fun at the expense of their ex’s, the guys start showing up dead.
Directed by Traci Hayes (Blood, Sweat and Cheer) and written by Eliza Hayes Maher (Deadly DILF), this is a slasher that’s less about the murders and more about the bonding between the ladies at the center of the mystery. If you’re looking for some light humor, you’ll enjoy it. If you’re looking for the normal gore that shows up on this site, you may not.
Mecca Noble (Moni Ogunsuyi) is the hottest reality star on Trophy Wives, but she’s told that they need to make the show even wilder for the next season. She soon learns that Angela Wright (Samantha Brown) is having her husband Damien’s (Eddie G.) baby, hooking up with him when he was drunk after his team won a big game.
Directed by Alicia K. Harris and written by Lu Asfaha, this is pretty predictable, but why else are you watching Tubi Originals, right? You want to see the crazy blonde girl manipulate everyone and make the suffering wife cry. No one will listen to her and soon, people are dying and maybe she can save her marriage because of course her husband is faithful and maybe the blonde has had this plan forever to ruin football.
I’m still going to watch these movies and write about them. Someone has to have an obsession and not just killer blondes in these tearjerkers.
Willa (Camila Banus), Hailey (Jasmine Shanise), Kenzie (Shonte Akognon), Flynn (Virginia Ma) and Liev (Justin Chu Cary) used to be a gang that robbed banks. But on their last job — and just before Willa gave birth to her daughter with Liev — they miss one armed guard who shoots Liev and sends the girls on the run.
Now, many. years later, Willa’s daughter Sophia has a heart condition and the only person who can give her the lifesaving donation she needs to survive is Liev. Except he’s just been put into a coma after standing up for other prisoners and meeting with a reporter.
That means that the gang has to get back together — and deal with Willa and Hailey hating each other because they both loved the same man — to break in, rescue their old friend and save a sick young girl.
Directed by Ted Campbell, who wrote the story with Richard Pierce, this finds the gang — who hasn’t seen each other for years — coming together to gather the needed tissue from Liev with the help of a surgeon turned butcher named Toth (Andy Umberger). They also find a way to get the word out about the abuses in the prison by Warden Locke (Tim Abell).
The end of this gets tense and that’s appreciated. It speaks to the continuing quality of the movies that Tubi is picking for their original films. As the girls race to get the heart tissue out of the prison, they find themselves facing the same situation that the movie started with, as several of their gang find themselves shot and near death. Should they leave them behind or can everyone make it?
Directed by Jaira Thomas and written by Briana Cole (The Marriage Pass), this finds Brandon (Asan N’Jie) and Andrea (Savannah Steyn) going on a vacation to the UK to try and fix their marriage. He’s a workaholic and it seems like whatever got them together is long gone. Even when they make their way to their resort, he’s answering work calls.
Things change when they meet Percy (Solomon Israel) and Chanelle (Adwoa Akoto), a married couple who encourage them both to get what they want. For Brandon, that may be a watch and standing up for himself. For Andrea, it’s finding what she feels is lost from the marriage. After a night of getting their groove back on, they’re shocked when Percy calls them to his room. He’s killed Chanelle and needs help getting rid of the body.
From that giallo-esque beginning, Played and Betrayed finds two couples switching the dynamic, going from innocent to role player and getting Brandon and Andrea closer while they deal with something they never thought they’d ever get into and emerge as people — and a couple — they never thought they were.
I don’t know if I totally believe the changes that they go through in just a few weeks, much less the way they bring in the story of how Percy and Chanelle helped Tia (Lola Wayne) kill off her horrible husband, but I guess when you go so far down the path, you have no problem doing some dark deeds and being just fine with it. By the end, it seems like our protagonists have become our antagonists.
Martha (Tamara Mazarrasa) has raised her daughters Raquel (Lucía Tinajero) and Eva (Giovanna Reynaud) well, but they don’t know that the mother who runs a boutique and is putting them through college used to run with one of the most dangerous gangs in town.
When Eva is taken by El Chacal (Alex Guerrero) and his gang, Martha learns that the police may have good intentions but they aren’t able to get the job done. To save both of her daughters, she’ll have to go back to the woman she was before.
Directed and written by Mitchell Altieri, this is exactly the type of revenge movie that you’d expect. Then again, the sneak attack where the gang releases Eva and has her so drugged up she dies a few days later — all the doctors and tests in the hospital couldn’t see that coming, I guess — is pretty out there and I like that the cop who helps Martha, Juan Cinderos (Javier Dulzaides), doesn’t become her lover. It’s got a strong heroine who doesn’t just stop when she defeats the gang but also tries to offer support and a future to the women they kidnapped. She finds closure by being who she was always meant to be: a mother.
This movie begins with Dorian (Shane Marriott) and Shantae Graham (Sagine Sémajuste) reading their marriage vows to each other. The thing is, we aren’t watching their wedding, but instead a bloody bathroom and signs of a murder. Maybe this marriage hasn’t worked out so well.
A year into their marriage, all the Grahams do is argue. They had planned to have a baby that she lost and she’s left the nursery, going in there to cry when she thinks of the child. As for Dorian, he works too much and often stays out late. Early on, we see him at a gentlemen’s club for a bachelor party when he runs into Reagan (Krista Nazaire), the sister of his wife and the bad girl of the family. She’s wasted and fighting with a bunch of guys, so he gives her a ride home but promises not to tell her sister that she’s back in town.
Dorian used to be a lothario back in the day — a year ago — and he misses his freedom. Shantae decides to give him a marriage pass — think Hall Pass but more of a giallo plot — where he will be allowed to cheat for one night with one person. She also gets the opportunity to do this and he’s already freaking out about it, but this does not stop him for getting with her sister, who even makes him say that he loves her while they’re having sex, even if he doesn’t mean it. She starts wanting more quickly, even if he’s explained that he doesn’t want anything but the one night marriage pass.
Of course, once he learns that Reagan is dating his friend Myles (Colton Royce) — he says that she has a great throat game, a thing I’ve never heard before and I was shocked. Shocked, I’ll tell you — he decides that he wants to be with her as much as he can, even having her sneak into his gynecology office for special appointments that his front desk nurse (Sarah Cleveland) is already spilling the tea over.
There’s also an uncomfortable family barbecue — Shantae and Reagan’s parents dislike Dorian and have no problem telling him that. Then things get way worse when Myles follows Reagan and attacks Dorian and things get out of hand with Dorian forgetting his Hippocratic oath to do no harm and killing his friend and hiding the body. Can it get tougher on him? What if Reagan gets pregnant and starts sending letters to the house telling Shantae that whoever her husband used his marriage path with has the child she can’t have?
Directed by Sam Coyle (Deadly Estate) and written by Briana Cole, who wrote the book that this was based on. I haven’t even gotten to the big twist, which is pretty great. You can see this as “psychological and domestic suspense” or, you know, a giallo. It’s a pretty fun movie and exactly the stuff that I love from a Tubi Original.
A holiday movie in January? Sure. But this one has a strange tradition I’ve never heard at the center of it.
Mummering is a Christmas-time house-visiting tradition that is mainly done in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ireland, parts of the United Kingdom and in Philadelphia. People dress in disguise and go from home to home. If they’re let inside, they may dance, sing, tell a joke or share a riddle. Their hosts then guess the mummers’ identities before offering them food or drink. The mummers wears masks and speak while inhaling to change their voices. Once everyone knows who they are, they remove their masks, spend some social time and then move on to the next location.
In the 80s, mummering had a revival when the band Simani released “Any Mummers Allowed In?”
Seriously, I had no idea this existed.
Now that you know what mummering is, you can enter the world of Guess Who.
Directed by Amelia Moses and written by Aaron Martin, Ian Carpenter and Matt Wells (Martin and Carpenter wrote the Terror Train remake and its sequel, as well as Marry F*** Kill on Tubi), this begins with Michael Gosse (Corteon Moore) and his new fiancee Kaitlyn Martindale (Keeya King) driving to his hometown. He explains that mummering will be part of the holiday, which seems to unsettle her. He tells her that he will be there and will keep her safe and that it’s all in fun.
When they get there, however, she has a mummer named Warren (Ryan Bommarito) steal her mother’s necklace. Michael attacks him and soon gets it back, which shows that he may have a darker side. Then, she’s taken to his house, where she meets his mother Edith (Elizabeth Saunders), brother Bobby (Gabriel Darku) and sister Sofia (Vanessa Jackson) and her girlfriend Taylor (Amanda Ip). Everyone in town lives in trailers and things seem dire, but the families try to make the holidays fun even if they’re going through things like Bobby’s wife not letting him see their daughter.
That evening, as they go to the mummer parties, things go from fun and a little scary to horrifying as there’s a killer on the loose. And just when the movie seems to be setting up that anyone could be the killer, well…spoiler warning.
Michael’s family kidnaps Kaitlyn because her rich father Norman (Chimwemwe Miller) caused the suicide of their father and they want money from him to pay it back. The loss of a parent plays into both protagonists but isn’t as developed as well as it could be. In fact, the movie seemingly shifts from being surprising and different to expected with the idea of who the slasher is seemingly forgotten and the idea that Kaitlyn could be killing people seemingly lost, as that was an intriguing angle. Instead, the supernatural air of a riddle slasher turns into a crime drama and I felt lost.
Guess Who is so close to being a good movie that I still advise that you see it. It has a different premise and setting that hasn’t been used in the genre before and for that, I enjoyed most of the film.
Tell Me No Lies feels inspired by Denise Huskins, who was accused of faking her own kidnapping. That’s the subject of American Nightmare, a Netflix series, but this is a Tubi Original.
Sofia Rose (Keturah Chambers) and her boyfriend Ben (Aaron Fontaine) are getting together for dinner. He tries to make it seem like they’re still a couple and tries to fix where their relationship went wrong, even if she wants nothing to do with him. He breaks down her defenses and later that night, while they’re in bed together, a kidnapper with a voice changer breaks in and kidnaps her. Ben’s the main suspect, as best friend Emily (Nkechi Simms) has hated him for the way he treats her galpal. But this feels like a giallo — everything does to me, I’m obsessed — and the truth is always much odder than the stories we tell.
When she was young, Sofia’s father was shot in a convenience store by a criminal accidentally released by Detective Wright (Wil Johnson). By coincidence — hmm, maybe not? — he’s on the case. And when Sofia frees herself from being kidnapped, he suspects her. But she’s smart enough to work with Jessica (Emily Eaton-Plowright), a young reporter who wants to prove herself.
I just read another review of this movie that was beyond distressed that this movie took a true case and twisted it. Have you ever watched an exploitation movie before? If that upset you, you can never watch so many movies.
Tell No Lies keeps things switching and changing and moving until the end, genuinely having some surprises beyond what you expect from a Tubi Original. Actually, I have to change my mind on that, as not only do I watch every single one of them but I also have to tell you that the quality has improved so much recently.
Directed by Courtney Paige, who wrote the script with J.R. Reher, Chapel starts with Cohen Black (Jeremy Sumpter) waking up in a hospital, unsure of who he is, where he’s been and why a fisherman found him nearly drowned five months ago. He’s helped by a nurse named Sofia Bloome (Pardis Saremi) to learn who he really is and what the name Ethan Tucker means.
Filmed in Utah, this movie is referred to as a country crime thriller. Once Cohen wakes up, he becomes a suspect in a serial murder case and followed by Detective Wyatt. He also has a series of memories that flood back in which he is surrounded by a table of women, which includes Grace Veum (Taryn Manning).
Whatever the past is, Cohen is drawn to a rundown motel where he meets 10 o’Clock Jack (Lochlyn Munro) and despite his relationship with Sofia, he falls for a girl named Misha (Carol Anne Watts). Then he starts to forget attacking — and even killing — women and the police close in, with Wyatt telling him that Sofia can no longer save him. And what’s the story with the envelope that Grace gave to Sofia? And is this whole thing a cover version of Identity by way of Momento on a Tubi budget?
Regardless, it starts strong and is shot pretty well, which is more than you can say for most streaming movies, right?
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