The Surrogate (2013) (aka: Carriers) Cameron Mathison, Annie Wersching, Amy Scott, Matthew Alan Movie Review

The Surrogate (2013)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Amy Scott in The Surrogate (2013) (aka: Carriers)

Psycho with a Baby Bump

After a series of health issues Allison Kelly (Annie Wersching - The Other Mother) had her eggs frozen but has now been told that time is running out and, along with her husband Jacob (Cameron Mathison - Holidaze), must pick a surrogate before it is too late. And they do just that, except there is someone else interested in being the Kelly's surrogate. That is Kate (Amy Scott) an office worker at the college where Jacob, a writer, also teaches a class. Secretly obsessed with Jacob, to the point of fantasizing about having hot passionate sex with him on a desk, Kate murders the surrogate who they picked and offers up her services to carry Jacob's baby. But she is not finished yet and she wants more, she wants to break Allison and Jacob up so that she can have Jacob all to herself.

When the subtlety of a well crafted storyline and dialogue evades you as a writer just reach for a sledgehammer and smash your way through a story. What I am on about is the type of movie which from start to finish doesn't feel real because everything about it feels forced, from the way the story develops to the way the characters act and the words which they speak. Whilst some might say what else do you expect from a TV Movie "The Surrogate" stoops well below the line of acceptability and is too over the top for its own good.

Cameron Mathison in The Surrogate (2013) (aka: Carriers)

Now for all the dressing up, and "The Surrogate" tries to dress things up with a scene featuring Kate being chased out of a house 4 years earlier, it is in fact a ridiculously simple movie; on one hand we have psycho Kate destroying a relationship because she fancies Jacob and on the other we have the husband of the surrogate that Kate murdered investigating the death and finding the path leads to Kate. Along the way we see Kate steal Jacob's credit card details and then buys stuff for herself as if they were from him. But as I said the subtlety is not there and neither is the logic more often than not with Allison being the sort of woman who jumps to conclusions over her husband.

But here is the thing about "The Surrogate" what all this is, is really just another psycho with a crush movie and a forced one at that, yet it is strangely watchable. The lack of subtlety is what makes it entertaining as you don't care what happens to the characters or connect with them. So instead you wait to smile at the next act of idiocracy from one of the characters.

What this all boils down to is that "The Surrogate" ends up not only another movie featuring a psycho with a crush but one which is ultimately familiar from start to finish. Not only that this made for TV movie comes up short on realism which makes it one which borders too frequently on being entertainingly bad.


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