I KNEW HIM BEFORE AND AFTER. We were acquaintances; he was a friend of a friend of mine. He had few filters, so he shared more information about his life than most people cared to hear. However, because he was fun and engaging, many folks just went along with whatever he was saying. I am not a mind reader or psychic, but after hearing about several of his dating exploits, I had a sense he was not as interested in the person as he was in what they did for a living. The more time I spent with him socially, the more I felt I was correct about my feelings. He was looking for someone with a large bank account who could take care of him. It was not my place to judge him; if there was someone out there who wanted to take care of him, then I had no issues with it. When he talked about a recent date he was on, he did not mention some key words like fun, enjoyed, kind. He would make mention of their fancy watch or expensive car or large residence. For me, these were not important things that I cared about when dating a person. These types of comments were mentioned over and over during his “before” years.      THE “AFTER” YEARS WERE THE ONES where he found what he was looking for in a date and they settled down to form a couple. The person he found came from money, something about a family company in business for a few generations. If you care to know; yes, they had an expensive watch, a fancy car and a huge home. They had traveled all over the world and as far as I could tell they loved him. My friend’s friend started coming to our social events dressed in the latest fashions, talked about the places the two of them traveled, flying to New York City for the weekend to see a Broadway show, the expensive restaurants they had visited; you get the idea. This is why I refer to him as “before and after” because there was such a drastic change in him once he found and dated someone who could provide him with all the things he had been searching for. I could not tell you if love was involved on his part; I have only heard him express his love for inanimate objects. Through my life experiences, I have never met anyone else like him except possibly one of the main characters in this dramatic, mystery thriller.      LINA, PLAYED BY ROSE WILLIAMS (MRS. Harris Goes to Paris, A Quiet Passion), was grateful for the kindness her mother’s friend showed her by taking her in after her mother’s death. The kindness began to wear thin once Lina found the woman’s son attractive. With Famke Janssen (X-Men franchise, Redeeming Love) as Katherine, Alex Hassell (The Tragedy of Macbeth, Violent Night) as Doctor Lawrence, Finn Cole (F9: The Fast Sage, Peaky Blinders-TV) as Jamie and Anna Friel (Limitless, Land of the Lost) as Nurse Mackenzie; this film had the trappings of a good suspense story, but the script kept getting in the way. The characters were never fully developed, and the dialog lacked authenticity. I was drawn by the scenes with Nurse Mackenzie, but there were not enough of those good scenes to make up for poorly done ones. The twists and turns offered seemed more done to provide a shock value than giving them some added weight to make sense. I enjoyed the look of the movie and the settings, but again, I did not feel a connection to the characters. This film was more like a jigsaw puzzle, where the writers took bits and pieces of other films and recreated them for this one without giving much thought to the fact, they made no sense.

1 ¾ stars