5/10
Getting Lost in the Peep Box
16 June 2021
Warning: Spoilers
At the start of "Revenge for Daddy," there was a fateful moment where a digital image photoshopped by Lisa Clark resulted in a fake photo of her alongside Michael Patterson. The image appeared on an inernet ap called Peep Box. The film is about the results of that sequence of events and the dark secrets of the history of the Clark family that were not a pretty picture in the Peep Box.

Lisa's dear father was killed in a hit-and-run accident that may have been intentional. But who would have wanted to kill a kind man who tried to help his alcoholic and deranged first wife and provide for his baby, Marie Dixon? The screenplay develops a number of legitimate suspects for the villain.

The prime candidate is Michael, whose user name is "Mr. Wonderful" on the dating ap, who charms his way into Lisa's life, but becomes a suspect with the death of Dina, the office manager where Lisa works. As a hobby, Dina researched true crime stories, and she made a startling discovery about the likely killer of Lisa's father. But Dina was murdered before she could pass on the vital information to Lisa, who becomes the prime suspect as Dina's killer.

While the narrative design was intriguing, a weakness of the film was in the wooden acting. The actors' line readings often sounded stilted and inappropriate for the moment. Facial reactions bordered on mugging for the camera. Lisa's reactions to being accused of murder and possibly spending life in prison seemed inappropriate when she kept smiling at the aggressive questioning by Detective Liz Wilson.

The climactic scene was a hostage situation with clumsy staging and more mugging from the actors. The denouement in which Lisa and Michael seemed to reignite their love sparks seemed unconvincing, especially after Michael had beaten Lisa's ex-boyfriend Bobby to a pulp and had been especially mean and unsympathetic to Lisa at a point when she was under arrest for murder.

While there may have been revenge for Daddy, the peep box was not especially kind to Lisa, especially if she chooses Michael as her Mr. Wonderful.
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