Midwest Obsession (1995) (aka: Beauty's Revenge) Courtney Thorne-Smith, Kyle Secor, Stephen Fanning, Tracey Gold Movie Review

Midwest Obsession (1995)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Courtney Thorne-Smith in Midwest Obsession (1995) (aka: Beauty's Revenge)

Midtable Obsession Movie

Kevin Reese (Kyle Secor) is just a hard working young man who has been dating the pretty Beth (Tracey Gold) for a couple of years whilst trying to earn enough money to keep the family farm running, paying off the debts that his father built up. Being a hard working and honest young man he stops to help a pretty young woman, Cheryl (Courtney Thorne-Smith), when he sees her getting harassed by a young man as he drives back to the farm. But in doing so he unwittingly causes Cheryl to become obsessed with him an obsession which leads to her making Kevin and Beth's life a living hell as she tries to push Beth out of the picture and manoeuvre herself into Kevin's life.

Some things never change and over the past few decades the obsessed stalker storyline has been a mainstay of the TV movie genre exploring psycho work colleagues to infatuated school girls. And that means one thing, when you come across another TV movie with an obsession storyline, either new or old, they generally end up predictable. That is the case when it comes to "Midwest Obsession", also known as "Beauty's Revenge", as whilst it was inspired by a true story and dramatized with elements of fiction it only ends up a familiar walk through the obsessed story line.

Kyle Secor in Midwest Obsession (1995) (aka: Beauty's Revenge)

But "Midwest Obsession" is not only familiar when it comes to how the story plays out it is also highly typical of the TV Movie genre. That means we have generic direction, generic dialogue and generic action with nothing you won’t have come across in other obsession based movies. It even makes the stereotypical mistake of starting with a crime and then jumping back a couple of months to how it all starts, taking much of the suspense out of the movie.

The one thing "Midwest Obsession" really has going for it is the acting with Kyle Secor doing a reasonable job of playing the good guy Kevin who is too naive to see what is going on with Cheryl. Talking of Cheryl it is Courtney Thorne-Smith who makes the biggest impression as she is beautiful and sexy and has the benefit of delivering the scenes of Cheryl's warped mind such as when she snaps in a bathroom and imagines pushing Beth's face into a bowl of water.

What this all boils down to is that "Midwest Obsession" is just your standard made for TV movie which tackles the obsessed theme. It is entertaining but only ever in a typical fashion, offering up nothing to make it stand out from the crowd of other TV movies about obsessed men and women.


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