Hidden Exposure (2023)
We all know it’s the thing for streaming services to produce original content, and it was only a matter of time before Tubi jumped on that bandwagon. They’ve been doing pretty well as of late, seeing as they offer a wide variety of viewing matter, both obscure and less so, for free, and all we have to do is sit through some unskippable ads.
Tubi’s original content journey started a few years ago, and while a lot of their initial offerings seem to be of the mockbuster variety, there’s also Hidden Exposure. It reads like a Lifetime movie until it isn’t, and then it really isn’t.
Sabina is a ballet teacher who had to quit performing due to an injury. Around the time her boyfriend, Ramsey’s business deal, or what he claims to be a business deal, falls through, she gets an opportunity to go back into performing, and the cherry on top is that it’s a part she’s always dreamed of playing. Ramsey is very against it, and it seems like boyfriendly concern, but as time goes in it’s more like control.
Meanwhile, Ramsey meets Alvy, the daughter of Mr. Abbott, the guy Ramsey’s trying to sell his business proposition to, and he’s intrigued to say the least. Once he starts seeing Alvy on the side, Ramsey looks for any old excuse to break up with Sabina, and since she doesn’t make enough money for his liking, anyway, Ramsey dumps Sabina and moves upstate with Alvy.
By weird coincidence, Ramsey and Sabina meet up at a party, have a one-night stand, and Sabina ends up pregnant. She heads upstate to tell Ramsey, who’s living the high life in a picturesque little town and running an art gallery and yoga studio with Alvy, who, by the way, is also pregnant.
As timing would have it, Sabina runs into Alvy, who, when she finds out Sabina’s taught yoga, asks her to give her a private class. Much to Ramsey’s chagrin, Alvy and Sabina become friends, although Alvy doesn’t know who Sabina really is.
Sabina not only visits Alvy at home, but she steals Ramsey’s letterman jacket while Alvy’s on the phone. Ramsey is pretty mad that he’s a baby daddy to two different women at the same time, but he deserves what he gets because he’s a chauvenistic heel.
Everything has to come to a head, of course. I kept hoping Sabina would drop Ramsey’s letterman jacket into the fire pit he built in his backyard and take a match to it, but we don’t get any such catharsis. Oh, no. Hidden Exposure doesn’t go there.
The movie is predictable to a fault. Anyone who’s seen a Lifetime or an Asylum movie will see Hidden Exposure coming from far away. Well, at least for the first hour, anyway.
Rumer Willis as Alvy basically runs away with the movie, but she’s got a lot of competition fron the movie itself, which jumps the shark, and then jumps another shark, and another, all in the third act. In fact, so many sharks get jumped that the movie has to grab a butcher knife and slice its way out. It’s supposed to be menacing and all that stuff, but I was rolling with laughter because what I saw was gloriously trying and failing to be Hitchcock-esque, or maybe M. Knight Shyamalan.
Like I said, the movie is a piece of crap. Wonderful, wonderful crap.
And the best part is, it’s free. Yay for Tubi. Yay for the rest of us.
Hidden Exposure is currently streaming on Tubi. Rated TV-MA
My grade: C
Principal Cast: Liana Liberato, Jordan Rodrigues, Rumer Willis, Richard Kind, Stef Dawson, Gregg Prosser, Lara Wolf, Thomas Lyons, Reem Amara, Jimmy Alvarez
Written and directed by: Todd Bogin