THE HUNTING WIVES (2025)

The Stepford Wives meets Twin Peaks meets The L Word  meets Desperate Housewives meets A Simple Plan (and some Gypsy, another Netflix series, thrown in)... About rich Texas Republicans who use every cliche (and red state reference) in the book, which is obviously overly deliberate, and thankfully the characters thaw out of their formidable shells into seeming more human than hackneyed... With a frame story about a gorgeous blonde teenage cheerleader whose death rocks the town, straight from that famous David Lynch series, but THE HUNTING WIVES isn't really ironical or weird, just extremely sexual...

The two main characters are Malin Akerman and Brittany Snow: one's older and hot and confident; the other's shy and mousy-cute, looks 22 when she's 40... Their lesbian romance is so overly hinted at and teased, there's not the necessary tension in their inevitable hooking up... Overall, despite the high-class-suburban conservative setting, things are so sensuously liberal that there's really no shock value in the nighttime soap opera elements... it's like lighting up a fuse that's already sizzling... But these two ladies are good enough in their opposites-attract attraction to keep the pulpy/page-turning (eventually neo-noir inspired) cadence worthwhile. Rating: ***1/2