A few days after watching the preview of the Perfect Guy on TV, my friend and I decided to go watch it in theaters because it seems like an interesting movie. In order to save ourselves some money, we decided to buy our own snacks and drinks. My friend already got snacks, which consisted of a pack of strawberry flavor Tiffany Crunch 'n' Cream cracker and a small bag of buttered popcorn.
I got my favorite soda, Sierra Mist and my friend got a kiwi strawberry flavor Snapple drink. Both drinks ended up costing the equivalent of one bottle of soda at the theaters.
Even though we planned ahead, we still ended up paying more than we would have a few years ago. We paid more than $21 for the two tickets. A few years ago it would have probably cost us 15 dollars but everything in this country is going up.
Anyway, we were worry about getting caught eating our own snacks so we sat close to the movie screen far away from the other people in the theatre but we shouldn't have worried because there were not a lot of people in the theatre. There were less than 15 people beside ourselves in that particular theater.
Since I still had the cold, both of us couldn't eat the popcorn from the bag so my friend volunteered to get us cups from the concession stand. After she returned, we were able to munch and drink while watching the previews. Nearly 40 minutes later, the movie finally came on.
It started off with the leading lady Leah Vaugh (Sanaa Lathan) and her soon to be ex-boyfriend David King (Morris Chestnut) attending a birthday party of Leah's friend. At the party, Leah saw how loving her friend's husband was to her friend which pushed Leah to start yearning for the same thing. But her commit-phob boyfriend didn't want to commit so they ended up breaking up. A few months later, Leah a meets a perfect stranger name Carter Duncan (Michael Early) at a restaurant after her friend conveniently backed out of their girls' night out at the last minute. Leah and Carter hit it of immediately after he saved her from a creep who was hitting on her. They immediately develop a passionate and sexual relationship.
The relationship quickly came to a sour end when Leah break broke up with Carter after he brutally beat a stranger at the gas station that they stopped at when they were on their way home from her parents' place. He thought that the stranger was flirting with Leah but the stranger was not, he was simply asking Leah after Carter's car. Carter did not stop beating the guy even when Leah cried and scream for him to do so. He only stopped when the owner of the gas station threatened him at gunpoint.
After their break up, he started stalking Leah and continue to do so even after she got a restraining order against him. His obsession even escalated after that and after she got back together with her ex. He used his skills as an IT Specialist to carry out his agenda.
The movie was a flop for me because I didn't l particularly like the way that it was made. I didn't empathized with Leah or her situation because it didn't seem realistic that a woman will blindly fall for a guy in this day and age of advance technology. Most women nowadays take the step by investigating men that they met with the help of social network and internet software. Leah could have done the same but she did not.Another reason why I didn't like the movie is that the role of the antagonist didn’t fit Early.I can only picture him as a protagonist base on the movies I have seen him in. It would have help if there were backstory for Early’s character, Carter. There was no reason provided in the movie why he became a psychopath.
I feel like the reason why some psycho thrillers like the Perfect Guy becomes successful is that those movies show us through flashbacks of the psycho before he became a psycho. Those movies shows us that the psycho was a human before becoming a monster and that something tragic happened to the psycho that promoted them to become psychos in the first place.
This movie had none of that. The way the creators presented Carter was a man whom existence started with Leah. And later ended with Leah because Leah killed him at the end.
