With all that being said, the Australian production has a lot of good going for it. Hill is easy to like and root for, even when he’s being a cheating bastard. He shares excellent chemistry with Murphy, and their quick love affair feels appropriately sexy and firey. Murphy is alluring and seductive while still menacing and playful in equal measure. It’s a tightrope of precise emotional control, and she walks confidently. Simay Argento portrays Jake’s legal assistant, Ayla, and she walks away with every scene she’s in. Argento is determined, sweet, loyal, and deserves a leading role in something, anything, to prove her mettle sooner rather than later.
Storywise, Lady Terror changes the expected beats, keeping things unpredictable. Outside of one scene, the cops don’t really play a part in anything that happens. This is all about Jake and how he feels about getting involved in Candice’s scheme. While very straightforward, it’s nice that the film is able to avoid so many tropes by simply not having police get involved. Then there’s everything that has to do with Ayla’s training to get her P.I. license and how that enters the picture. This is a fun subplot that pays off well.
“…changes the expected beats, keeping things unpredictable.”
Perhaps most importantly, for a thriller of this nature, it comes across as sexy and dangerous. It is true that the sequences that are just two people talking are rather blandly done. Medium shots and the occasional close-up are it. But the sex scenes, which display little to no nudity, are very stylized with soft lighting, fade-ins, and crazy angles to visualize the intense heat of the moment.
Lady Terror should be retitled as it is not a horror film, and there’s nothing terrifying in what happens. While the film does have some filler despite an 80-minute runtime or so, it is still interesting. The cast is good, and the atmosphere is heavy with steamy passion and danger. While hardly perfect, this is a fun throwback to a style of filmmaking largely not seen in some 20 years.
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"…a fun throwback to a style of filmmaking largely not seen in some 20 years."
