Characters in thrillers--especially the women--live in a parallel universe, don't they? A universe where they've never read a thriller or seen one on TV or in a movie theater.
Because otherwise they wouldn't behave like dummies even now, heading past the middle of the decade.
Take Jennifer Lopez in this year's erotic thriller The Boy Next Door.
She plays a high school teacher of classics here. That's right, and in a school that offers a year-long course in Homer. The poet, not Homer Simpson. It's one helluva well-paid job because she drives what looks like a Cadillac SUV. [Spoilers Ahead]
Of course, who cares since you're either ogling Lopez looking gorgeous in every scene or drooling over ripped Ryan Guzman, the sociopath who moves in next door, befriends her nebbish son, displays his body for Lopez at night in a well-lit bedroom across the way, seduces her and then stalks her in escalating scenes of nightmarish threat and violence.
It all ends with bizarre family togetherness, but before that, Lopez goes dumb in major ways aside from having humped a high school sociopath. Her bestie phones Lopez to come over right away because she's in trouble. When Lopez pulls up and the house is totally dark, is she cautious? Nope. Does she call first? No again. She rushes inside. When the lights don't work, does she back out and dial 911? Well, you guessed it. She proceeds alone and unarmed into the large dark house, calling out her friend's name.
And in her final confrontation with the psycho hunk, when she gets a chance to take him down, she clunks him on the head just once. Duh! When he's knocked out, she doesn't finish the job or even kick him a few times to further incapacitate him, despite knowing how dangerous and twisted he is. He's tied up her husband and son, threatened to kill them both, killed her best friend, and was going to turn the barn they're all in into a giant funeral pyre. But of course she turns her back on him.
And of course that one blow doesn't do the trick. He predictably rises up and attacks her again. More mayhem ensues...and Lopez shrieks enough to win a Yoko Ono Award.
You'd think after Scream had eviscerated this kind of plotting years ago, writers would be embarrassed to have their characters behave like dummies, but Hollywood keeps churning out femjep films.
Sadly, this one was co-produced by Lopez herself.
Lev Raphael is the author of The Edith Wharton Murders and 24 other books in genres from memoir to mystery.