F*** Marry Kill

Grade: B-

Devoted readers of mine may know that B- and C+ is my pass/fail cutoff point. The former represents the worst good movies, and the latter rating goes to the best bad ones. This grade is made for films like F*** Marry Kill. It’s the best bad movie of the year.

Grade: C+

That’s what I was planning on ending with. I didn’t want to waste that closing line. However, after taking some time to let it sit with me, I am passing F*** Marry Kill. The plot kept my interest enough to continue watching, and I had a genuine curiosity to find out what all happens. This is an attractive cast, including the men – and Virginia Gardner, one of my biggest movie star crushes, is billed as the second lead. I have seen all of her projects since Fall. 

The primary star is Lucy Hale. I never watched Pretty Little Liars, but I know her from Which Brings Me to You – a streaming romantic dramedy released early this year. She plays the just-turned-30 Eva, who is newly single after an eight year relationship with Jake, a local policeman. She works as an assistant to her best friend Kelly (Gardner), a photographer. One of Eva’s friends gets her on a dating app. Meanwhile, there is a killer on the loose, going around town murdering women out on first dates.

The hosts of Mark My Murder, a true crime podcast that everyone obsessively listens to, dub this person the Swipe Right Killer. Various potential clues throughout the movie point to the SRK being one of the three men Eva connects with and begins dating. They include Mitch (a bartender/restaurant owner), Norman (who installs a security system in Eva’s home), and old classmate Kyle. I inevitably thought of the recent Netflix film Woman of the Hour, where Anna Kendrick is a contestant on The Dating Game, and one of the three bachelors on the show is a serial killer. Incidentally, Jedidiah Goodacre, who plays Kyle, appeared as Bachelor #2 in Woman of the Hour.

As expected, we are led down paths, only for most of them to have been a misunderstanding. The Swipe Right Killer has a thing for Rosé wine (Kyle is a fan), never leaves fingerprints (Mitch has blank, nondescript fingertips, due to burning his fingers so many times at his job), and wears a size 10 shoe, just like all three guys. There are times when it could be any one of them. For being rated R, F*** Marry Kill never gets scary or even that tense, but the actors sell the storyline enough to keep me on board. For being a comedy, more jokes are unsuccessful than the ones that work, but I did laugh a couple times. Lucy Hale is one of the more appealing romcom leading ladies in the business right now. As for the legendary Virginia Gardner – if you like her, this is worth seeing. She turns out to be more involved than your standard one-or-two-scene movie best friend.

The reveal of the killer, of course, is accompanied by a lengthy monologue where every last motive, reasoning, procedure, and logistic detail is specifically broken down. There is a self-aware reference to it afterwards. “I got a big Killer’s Speech. Can you believe it?” The explanation is a little bit convoluted, but not too much. I hesitated, but finally concluded that there’s enough here to make me not regret seeing F*** Marry Kill – the worst good movie of the year. I wouldn’t marry it, and I wouldn’t kill it.

Grade: B-