The Red Dress: A Psychological Thriller

I know, I know. I said I would give Sean Maguire a break. But LMN (Lifetime Movie Network) aired this movie on Sunday, January 24th, and of course I watched it, despite some hesitation because I know the fair LMN airs. So, how was it? Let’s take a look.

Beware sneaky husbands, supposed friends and SPOILERS!


We start with advertising for Malta Airlines as a plane lands at an airport in…you guessed it! Malta! Someone gets a red sports car, hops in and drives through Malta to an isolated but gorgeous mansion over looking the water. The driver is James (Sean Maguire) and he hurries, shouting for “Rainer” and “Patricia.” He grows frantic, going into the house. Something in there makes him stop and look sick. He turns around, shouting for Patricia (Rachel Skarsten). Spotting her running away from the house, James gives chase. She runs to a nearby castle and shots open a door with the rifle she’s carrying. James shows up and she turns it on him as he tries to calm her down, assuring her everything will be okay.

Then we flashback to six months prior, to London. James is telling a story to party guests while Patricia either sets a table or cleans up. James and a woman exchange some banter and then the party is over. 

Patricia and Rainer (Callum Blue) discuss the party and then Rainer says he has to head out of town on business. She’s a bit bummed but he promises he’ll be back soon.

Next the room is engulfed in flames and we hear a baby crying. Patricia tries to go rescue the poor thing who is kicking in a crib but the flames are too much. She collapses on the stairs and when we next see her, she is being embraced by Rainer. Her clothes are stained with smoke and she’s sobbing that the baby is dead.

Of course, Patricia doesn’t take it well and has trouble sleeping. So Rainer suggests a change of pace, offering to take her to Malta for a fresh start. She agrees and away they go.

The house is gorgeous. It’s nice and spacious, furnished and with a glorious view of the water. And it has a beautiful pool, which we see Rainier cleaning one morning as Patricia watches. It’s then that a sports car pulls up and she’s surprised to see James. Rainer, though, is not. He explains that James is dropping some things off from their office and that he was in town because he was romancing an Italian woman. Patricia seems to accept that.

Patricia invites James up for breakfast and the two have a talk while Rainier is off doing other things. Up to this point, James has been somewhat of a carefree and jovial person. Now alone with Patricia, we see his serious side. He asks how she’s doing and she assures him that she’s doing better. She tells him that Rainier is wonderful to her. His demeanor changes and he grows colder, mocking her statement. It’s almost like he’s jealous. But is it of Rainer or her? Hmm…

Anyway, Rainier returns and James is back to his light and carefree self. He bids them goodbye and walks back to his car with Rainier. James gives him a box and assures him he’ll handle everything back in London. Rainier asks if he got that thing he asked for and James tells him its in the bottom of the box. I wondered if it was poison and that Rainier was slowly poisoning Patricia to her unhinged state in the opening scenes.

From there on out, we do a lot of jumping around. So I’ll try to condense it into the two main plots, okay? We’ll start with the flashbacks.

Patricia goes to meet Rainier at his office, wearing a new red dress. She runs into Candace, a beautiful woman who works at the office, who compliments her dress. Shortly after, James spots her and invites her to wait in his office. Rainier walks by some time later, hearing the sounds of James having sex with someone and spotting a red dress on the desk. He chuckles, amused by his friend’s antics and unaware that its his wife in there.

Some time later, Patricia is sleeping with James on a regular basis. She takes a pregnancy test in his bathroom and it comes back positive. When James asks if anything’s wrong, she says no and leaves to head home. Patricia tells Rainier she’s pregnant and he’s less than thrilled. At that moment, only one thought went through my head: That’s the face of a man who can’t have children. While speaking with Candace at the Christmas party, she mentions seeing Patricia at the office in a red dress and Rainier is clueless about this. He starts to put two and two together, fishing to see if Patricia owns a red dress later that night. She says she just owns the one he bought her and they move on.

She meets with James in her car one day and tries to break it off, for Rainier’s sake. But James says that she doesn’t love Rainier and just took the first chance she got to get out of her humdrum life. He calls their marriage a business arrangement—Rainier has someone to show off at social events and Rachel has his bank account at her disposal. He tells her they have so much more. And so she seizes on this as their affair continues, even deciding to leave Rainier now that the baby is born. But James tells her not to and says he meant was that they had passion and sex, but not love. Patricia yells that the baby is his (no surprise there) and he throws her out.

Sometime during this, Candace’s husband has a meeting with Rainier. He says that he knows his wife is having an affair with James and hired a private investigator to get evidence. Rainier isn’t sure what this has to do with him until the man shows him pictures of James and Patricia together. Combined with everything, Rainier cannot deny the truth: his wife and his best friend are having an affair. He still confronts James, who cops to the affair with Candace but swears he isn’t having one with Patricia. He paints her as having issues and that he wouldn’t betray his friend like that.

Charming.

In the present, James calls Rainier and tells him that the police now suspect arson. He says they want to talk to him and Patricia. Rainier asks James to handle it and he agrees to do it.

Rainier seems to enjoy life in Malta…but then again, he leaves the property. Patricia seems to be in some sort of house arrest situation, only ever going to the house or the beach. There’s no computer and though she talks about calling her sister, we never see her do it. Only Rainier ever is on the phone, usually with James. Patricia starts to grow suspicious.

Especially when she has some strange encounters. The first is a little blonde girl by the beach who seems to disappear whenever anyone else approaches. The second is John Rhys-Davies, doing an accent which I guess is a Malta one. I’m not sure. Anyway, he creeps her out because he’s John Rhys-Davies with a gun and dead birds, which he often leaves for Rainier. Because that’s not creepy at all.

(Of course Rhys-Davies does creepy very well).

Rainier seems to run hot and cold in Malta. Sometimes he’s very loving and supportive. Other times, he’s cold and mean. He could turn very fast and be so cruel, I would yell at the TV screen for Patricia to somehow run far, far away. I’m still not sure why she was so confined to the house, why she didn’t make her own way back to England. Or America, since it sounded like she was American.

She’s also very sleep deprived, unable to get a good night’s sleep due to her nightmares of the baby. She also starts to see things—namely a baby doll that keeps popping up. But it always disappears before Rainier can see it. She also thinks there is an intruder one night and that John Rhys-Davies hurt the little girl.

And then she discovers the pill bottle. Since arriving at Malta, Rainier has been religious about her drinking her tea. It had tasted off to her and she knew why now: he had been putting pills in the brew. Pills for what? I’m not really sure…They have been prescribed by a doctor it’s hinted at that Patricia saw reluctantly. That she had been prescribed the medicine but she refused to take it. Or at least, that’s Rainier’s story. Patricia doesn’t believe it as he’s been sneaking it in her tea, hiding the pill bottle from her and it has James’ name on it. She thinks the two are working together to slowly poison her.

That’s when Rainier reveals he’s known the truth all along—Patricia cheated on him with James and he’s the father of the baby since Rainier can’t have children. He starts yelling at her and he does get scary. So Patricia runs into the house and finds the gun. Arming herself, Patricia is determined to keep Rainier away as he pleads with her to open the door. Instead, she shoots him through it.

Spotting the little girl and John Rhys-Davies, she gives chase. We are now back to the beginning, with James running after her. He finds her in the room in the palace, pleading with her to calm down. Patricia admits everything to him—that she killed the baby girl in hopes that she could get James back and then set the fire to cover it up.

Wow.

She then kills James. Let us all take a moment to purge the image of a dead Sean out of our minds, okay? It wasn’t real.

Patricia drops the gun and heads down to the shore, sitting on a rock. The little blonde girl comes up to her and sits on her lap. As Patricia cuddles her, the girl asks if she’s going to take her home. They sit there as John Rhys-Davies comes up to tell her he’s come to take her home. Patricia says she is home and we see that she’s holding nobody. The girl only exists in her head—the ghost of the child she killed.

dun dun DUN!

So…what did I think? Well, I’ll be honest—this is usually not my cup of tea. And I did hesitate to watch it because I know I usually don’t gravitate to the movies on LMN. (TV shows though are a different story. I Love You…But I Lied? Brilliant!) I ended up watching because, well, Sean.

The acting was superb, though it was strange to see Sean as a villain. Most of the other projects I’ve seen him in, he’s usually the good guy/male romantic lead. Even the one where he was a womanizer (Prince Charming), he was good down underneath it all. Here, he had no morals and no heart in the end.

Of course, one could argue that was just how Patricia saw him. The movie does leave the audience guessing about whether Rainier was messing with his wife as payback or if she really was paranoid. It was also played with whether or not James did have actual feelings for Patricia. There are times he seemed to genuinely like her and seemed to be jealous of Rainier. The times he was a jerk were all told from Patricia’s viewpoint and we know she isn’t reliable.

Would I give this a second viewing? Probably not, but more so because these movies aren’t my cup of tea. But if you love them, though, go ahead and enjoy.