Over the years, Netflix has developed quite a reputation for its original and exclusive films. They're extremely hit or miss, often depending on genre. The genre one can certainly count on the most for terrible entertainment is their selection of soapy/steamy thrillers. They're always a mess, but often entertaining, and very reminiscent of a Lifetime thriller but with a higher budget.
Every year or so it seems a new one of these wild steamy thrillers is released on Netflix, and social media has an amazing amount of fun tearing it apart. In 2019 they gifted their viewers Secret Obsession. Last year in 2020, the big soapy Netflix thriller was Dangerous Lies. In what seems to be their most ridiculous installment yet, Deadly Illusions was released to the platform in March of 2021.
Deadly Illusions focuses on Mary, played by Kristen Davis, who was once a very successful thriller novelist. She has long been out of the working game to focus on her husband and children, but the family falls on financial hardships and she has to write one more book. To get some help with the kids, Mary and her husband hire a nanny named Grace. Of course, she appears to be perfect, but may turn out to be darker than she seems.
The plot of Deadly Illusions itself isn't necessarily what makes it bad. It's an intriguing enough story, though of course still very Lifetime kind of vibes. The problem is that so much of the writing makes absolutely no sense and at the end of the film, the viewer is left quite confused. There are also multiple plot points where the supposed hero of the story, acts completely unrealistically and inappropriately for no apparent reason. It's overall just a very poorly constructed movie, with terrible messaging.
This film is unpredictable in the worst way possible. The plot points and twists throughout the story aren't effective even though they are shocking, because they make absolutely no sense. Things that feel pointed and intentional, like they could be clues, end up meaning nothing. There is also absolutely no lead-up at all to the main twist of the film, which makes it more confusing than anything, and the final images of the movie seem to hint at another sort of twist that also makes no sense. It's a shame to take these potentially interesting ideas and waste them on such poor story structure and film execution.
Mary is portrayed as the hero of this story, and in some ways the victim of the film's "villain." It's designed to get the viewers to root for her. However, she acts so horribly and is incredibly inappropriate towards Grace. Near the beginning of the film, she takes Grace shopping for lingerie for no apparent reason and is even in the changing room with her, which is just completely inappropriate for a boss to do. They also at one point go swimming together, and Mary is naked for some reason. Throughout the film, Mary also has multiple sexual fantasies about Grace. While the twist sort of muddles whether or not Mary is at fault for those fantasies or if she was actually preyed on, her actions were still very inappropriate and this would go down as workplace harassment.
A really big problem with Deadly Illusions that maybe doesn't have as much to do with the filmmaking itself, is its messaging. When the big twist at the end is revealed, the audience learns that Grace actually has dissociative personality disorder. It's still very confusing and people have different interpretations of what's going on. However it seems that what happened was that Grace was the wonderful perfect girl she said she was, and her other personality Margaret was the evil one doing all of the villainous acts.
The mental illness trope in horror and thriller films is massively overused and perpetuates really harmful stereotypes. Portraying people with a mental illness like DID as villainous all the time makes it seem like people who actually struggle with these things are inherently evil. It makes it seem like society should be scared of these people. This is proven to be not true in real life, but those stigmas and stereotypes continue to exist because of media like this and that is not okay.
As a whole, this film is clearly very bad. It's poorly constructed and written, with terrible characters, and it's also highly problematic. It does though kind of fall into that "so bad it's good" category where it is awful, but it is kind of fun and enjoyable to watch. Because of the harmful stereotypes it perpetuates, it's hard to recommend Deadly Illusions. However, if the viewers are aware of it enough that they know it's just fictional and not a mirror of real life there is some value here. It's still a fun watch, perfect for a get-together with a couple of friends that want to have a laugh.