I was contacted by Melvin M. Claybrooks, the writer/director of an Ohio-made indie, The Worst Way, with a request for a professional review and constructive criticism on his debut film. I’m always happy to provide what I hope is a helpful and insightful analysis of people’s creative collaborations, as movies are so much work, and sometimes they work but, as often I’ve found in my many years sifting through Ohio-made indies, very often they might not. It’s good to analyze why. When the director told me his movie encapsulated the genre of “erotic psychological drama,” I’ll admit that part of me became a little wary. Perhaps it’s having a wife who has read plenty of books with varying levels of spice who refuses to read romance novels written by men, but I’m wary when men are the chief proponents of eroticism simply because the Male Gaze is long established to be a default setting after, oh, a century of movies. Still, I was willing to judge The Worst Way on its own artistic merits, hopeful that any initial genre misgivings might fade away. They never did.

The Worst Way is ostensibly a love triangle, so for better analysis, let’s focus on each corner of this messy relationship. First things first, our leading lady, Luna (Skyylie Jeter). Our introduction to her is with an opening party that parlays into some alcohol-fueled games of old, like Truth or Dare and Spin the Bottle. It’s somewhat curious that adults would gather to play these games in their, I’m assuming, twenties and maybe thirties, but hey, maybe it’s nostalgic. At this party, she meets Orlando (Shawn Johnson), who swears they’ve met fifteen years prior as teenagers (given that timeline, I’m assuming these characters are at least pushing thirty if not in their 30s now). He went by David then, and this reunion triggers old memories likely romanticized from being so long ago in the past. This is a fine setup, a man from her past has returned and they’re feeling one another out as to who they are as adults and whether they may still have a connection. Except the next scene has Luna going home to her drug-dealing criminal boyfriend, Ryan (Timothy Hightower). Again, this is a familiar setup for relationship dramas, the unfulfilled character tempted by someone new. Our helpful narrator informs us that Ryan and Luna’s relationship seems one of convenience. He supplies the drugs, they get high, they have sex, and things are fine. We’re told by our narrator that after Luna stopped using drugs, though, that she recognized the sex was not so good and her relationship was little more than transactional. Given all this, we can understand why Luna might be looking for a different man, especially one who presents himself with a fancy apartment and multiple investment properties. Oh, did I also mention that Ryan is abusive, has pulled a gun on her, choked her, and repeatedly threatened to kill her if she were to leave? This seems pretty clear-cut as far as where she will eventually go, maybe even enlisting Orlando to kill Ryan for her, like a modern neo-noir.

Except that’s not what really happens. It’s confusing because her new option presents a multitude of reasons to leave, but she doesn’t. You could argue she’s afraid to leave, but the script is either trying to present a more nuanced portrayal of the psychology of leaving an abusive, controlling, predatory relationship, or it’s just muddled writing that loses sight of the character. Not only does Luna hem and haw over which man she should ultimately choose, she keeps giving Ryan more chances and incredulously defends him to her non-plussed friends: “He didn’t hit me, he choked me. There’s a difference.” Now, people are complicated and often don’t do what’s best for them. People often stick it out in toxic relationships, or are drawn to them, for a myriad of psychological and circumstantial reasons. Some people wrongly think they don’t deserve any better. Luna does not strike me as a person who feels her worth is less. This could be intriguing to explore, the contradictions of what we know we want versus what we know we should do. That can be the stuff of great drama and insight. I don’t think The Worst Way gets there. As presented, Luna is a bored woman with a high sex drive and a serious case of indecisiveness. You might end up screaming at the screen because this decision goes unanswered until the very end.

I’ll examine the merits, or lack thereof, of both paramours in my later paragraphs, but for now we’re focusing on Luna. Is she ultimately compelling to be our protagonist? Not really. Once Orlando appears, the story becomes a repetitive game of adult musical chairs, with her going back and forth to each man, swearing fidelity. Again, this can work in adulterous dramas, but it doesn’t feel like we’re getting to know Luna any better as a person. Maybe she enjoys the attention too much, and I think part of her enjoys the jealousies that she can instigate, which is why she refrains from making a choice. However, even as the movie escalates in its second half, Luna isn’t any more involved. Strangely, she becomes the third or maybe even fifth most prominent character in the last 40 minutes of the movie, as the story focuses its attention completely on the escalating war between Ryan and Orlando. It’s genuinely surprising how absent Luna is for much of the second half of the movie. To me, this feels like a tacit acknowledgement that there just isn’t enough going on with her character if she can be sidelined so readily. Given this, she comes across less like a fully-dimensional character and more like a plot catalyst to spur the men to fight. Thus the extensive attention paid to her pleasure feels more exploitative and effectively redundant.

Let’s next examine the bad boyfriend, Ryan. There’s not a lot to go on here. He’s a dealer with rage issues and rampant paranoia, even if he has good reason to be paranoid. He’s a stock villain, written simply to provide a negative impression so we understand why she wants to leave. Except she doesn’t. Is he improving as a character? Does he have goals? Does he show different sides? Does he have a personal secret that he even keeps from Luna? No to all of that. He’s merely the Bad Boyfriend. He’s meant to be dumped for someone better, typically a more well-adjusted, thoughtful, and secure character. Now imagine in a rom-com or Hallmark movie or whatever relationship drama you want to recall, if that bad boyfriend character established early stuck around for the whole movie and our heroine was having a really protracted and exasperated time trying to make a decision. There isn’t enough here to justify his continued involvement and competition for her heart. It’s not even like he’s providing something Orlando cannot, like if their sex life was more passionate or adventurous. I suppose Ryan’s run-ins with law enforcement might provide a lift of danger and excitement for her, but that seems contrived. It’s no shock then when the violent man with jealousy and anger issues plots violent and angry retribution. The fact that he’s an ongoing competitor in this love triangle is baffling and really a further indictment on Luna as a character.

That leaves us with Orlando, who has a personal history tracing back to Luna’s teenage years. It seems he was her first everything, so she says. First love, first boyfriend, and the implication is also that she lost her virginity to him. It’s one of the movie’s better jokes that she can’t recognize him because he “looks so different” from the flashbacks because he was played by a different actor. Now a grown man, he seemingly has a cushy life-style built from a legitimate business. He’s not bad with physical intimacy either. And he doesn’t abuse her or threaten to kill her. Because this love triangle feels so unbalanced, I started wondering what sinister revelations could come from Orlando to make him less enviable. I started wondering if this swanky apartment he takes Luna to was actually his because he still works as a barber. No shame to barbers, but I doubt many people could afford that kind of place, and he tells Luna he has multiple investment properties, so is all this phony? Is this going to be like The Great Gatsby and his appearance of riches and status are a carefully constructed fantasy to win over the girl that got away from his past, someone he no longer really knows as an adult and now symbolizes more to be possessed? Not really. I wondered if maybe he was going to be too sexually transgressive for Luna. Their first encounter has him set a bowl on the floor below her while he services her. When she asks him why he did this, he shrugs, takes the bowl, and literally waters his houseplants with her sexual fluids. That is… something.

Having three characters fight for romantic dominance when they should all go their respective ways isn’t a bad formula for a movie. However, the execution hinges on the audience finding these characters interesting, compelling, or at least there being enough surprises to keep us watching. I don’t know if The Worst Way can provide the rest in the wake of its unfulfilled lead trio. The screenplay involves too many scenes of characters talking through the circumstances, resetting the stakes and dynamics for an audience in case we might forget, the thing we complain about Netflix movies over. I would say that these are unnecessary recaps, but the editing can also be rather peculiar. There are several fake-outs, including a main character death that’s merely a dream. When you have characters repeating plot events without providing new insight, multiple characters sitting down to summarize the movie, and then you have multiple fake-out fantasies and dream sequences, then maybe this story isn’t quite as tight as it could be. The fact that you have a narrator means you should be able to skip the less important stuff, though it does raise the question how our narrator would know all these events if Luna wasn’t present for them, unless the whole thing was a fictional ruse.

Now I’ve gone this long into the review without talking about the production values because, as a low-budget indie film done primarily with local talent, there needs to be a sliding scale of expectations given the natural limitations of the production. Many of the scenes are composed exclusively as shot-reverse shot compositions with little coverage, likely for efficiency rather than as some grand visual design. The camera and lighting quality are perfectly acceptable. The sound design, also a repeated issue for many low-budget indies, is solid. I find that many shortcomings from a production standpoint can be forgiven if I’m simply hooked on the creative ingenuity, storytelling, or acting. Not every movie needs to look like a sleek David Fincher thriller. Some of the sets are quite good, like that swanky apartment with large windows of a city-wide vista (come to scenic Toledo!). I really liked the cutting back and forth from Orlando and Luna as adults to them as teenagers lying on the grass, faces illuminated by fireworks. That’s cinematic stuff, and I wish the film had played around more visually with its sense of memory. The main acting runs the gamut from stiff and limited to competent to promising. I found the best actor to be Hightower as our villain. He offers more degrees of pomposity meant to be lampooned that make his performance more entertaining. I actually think the movie’s last 40 minutes, where it abandons Luna’s perspective, is the most entertaining and successful part of the movie. While Ryan and Orlando are still characters with limits, their war of machismo has a tit-for-tat that feels like actual story progression. It’s also where the movie opens up several of Ryan’s friends as supporting characters, and I enjoyed them. I like that one of these guys is preaching caution. Another guy is promising to leave for good to live overseas with his girl, just after all this. At that point, I found myself more invested in Ryan’s buddies than anyone else in the movie, so it was kind of working for me.

For me, there’s a narrow line between something being erotic and something being exploitative, but I suppose, much like sexuality, it really depends on what someone is looking for (the old adage “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” can also apply to eroticism). Erotic thrillers had their heyday many decades ago and feel like a dated remnant of the past, but that doesn’t mean cinema must be chaste and lack any passion or sensuality. It is, after all, a medium for the senses. From my subjective perspective, the erotic nature of the movie just felt like slightly longer sex scenes that weren’t exactly sexy (remember the well-placed bowl for the man’s plants?) but then they weren’t exactly that memorably transgressive (except the plant thing, obviously) or button-pushing either. The emphasis on physical connection could have opened up these characters in meaningful ways, from what desire denied and desire fulfilled are doing to each of them. It’s just that when you place so much narrative emphasis on your main three characters in a romantic triangle, you’re making a bet that the audience is going to find these people interesting or at least the dilemma compelling. The Worst Way is far from the worst, and eager fans for something more daring or adult could potentially find some purchase here, but it was a drama that felt a little too underdeveloped with characters unworthy of your investment. Because of the limitations of the three main characters, as well as the lack of psychological analysis, I found them mostly just bodies on a screen, occasionally bumping into one another for violence or pleasure, but rarely ever compelling.

Nate’s Grade: C-