Pursued (2025) Killer Match: A Thriller That Misses Its Mark
Director: Jeffrey Obrow
Cast: Madison Lawlor, Taylor Blackwell, Sam Trammell, Angus Macfadyen, Molly Ringwald, Miesha Tate
Cert: 16+
Running time: 104 mins
Written and directed by Jeffrey Obrow, this serial killer thriller has a strong central idea and a handful of decent performances, but it’s let down by a script that is frequently all over the place and a laughably over-the-top performance from Angus Macfadyen as the world’s most obvious serial killer.
Madison Lawlor stars as Lark, a 17 year old high school student who still harbours tremendous guilt over losing her father in a car crash two years previously, because she sneaked out of her bedroom window to go to a party and he went after her. Driven by a compulsion to take up causes and fight for what’s right, Lark investigates the new guy that her mum (Molly Ringwald) is dating and discovers that a man with the same name, Mark Franc, might be responsible for the murder of a young woman in the area, after hacking a dating site and finding abusive messages from him.
Teaming up with her best friend Nicole (Taylor Blackwell) and kindly teacher Jack Dusett (Sam Trammell), Lark tracks down the killer (Angus Macfadyen) and tries to draw him out by contacting him via a fake dating profile. But when her initial plan goes horribly wrong, Lark, Jack and Nicole find themselves targeted by Franc, who will stop at nothing to get rid of them.
The wildly jarring tone of the film is established early on. On the one hand, it’s a typical high school setting, with likeable characters familiar from dozens of teen movies – it even has Molly Ringwald in it for bonus Breakfast Club vibes. And then the first time we encounter Franc, he is sitting in his basement and proceeds to eat his pet tarantula, Daisy (played by Daisy the tarantula) out of spite, after she bites him.
On a similar note, while the majority of the action is very much typical suburban smalltown USA stuff, there’s a sudden out-of-nowhere tonal shift where Lark and Nicole end up delivering a package to a very freaky underground sex club. One assumes that Obrow thought he was giving the film a dash of David Lynch (a glimpse into America’s dark underbelly, that sort of thing), but it’s poorly staged and just comes across as an excuse for some gratuitous nudity.
Amusingly, that’s not even the most unbelievable part of that sequence. No, that would be scrawny teacher Jack taking out two built-like-a-brick-shithouse bouncers all on his lonesome.
To give the film some credit, the screenplay is fully aware of some of the ridiculously stupid decisions made by Lark and Nicole – “Can we just count? How many stupid things the two of you have done in the last 48 hours?”, says Jack, at one point. However, that doesn’t really excuse some of the other problems with the plot – there’s no real reason why the police couldn’t be involved immediately, for example, especially since literally every character who comes across him comments on how creepy and weird Franc is.
The script is also full of unintentional laugh-out-loud moments, such as Lark lamenting, “I wish I’d taken a screenshot” when the evidence in the dating profile gets taken down. If you’re not screaming, “WHY DIDN’T YOU?” at the screen at that point, you have admirable self-restraint.
In fairness, Obrow does pull off a couple of decent jump scares, and he occasionally displays a good eye for a memorable image, such as a body in a swimming pool with the clouds of blood looking like red wings. On top of that, the performances are mostly decent – it’s only Macfadyen’s wildly exaggerated turn that doesn’t really work, as it’s so different in tone.
On that note, the film is also notable for two pieces of casting. Firstly, it features one of the last screen performances by Paul Sorvino (GoodFellas), who has a couple of sweet scenes as Nicole’s kindly grandad – Sorvino died in 2022, which illustrates how long this film has been on the shelf.
And secondly, it features real-life fighter Miesha Tate as Lark’s friend Drea – clearly the part was written for her, because she plays a fighter / coach / gym owner, and the way the script writes her into the final act is yet another example of the movie’s propensity for a crazy left turn. It’s just a shame that the film’s actual finale falls so flat, with key events happening offscreen and the events of the climax feeling decidedly rushed.
In short, if you have a fondness for trashy movies, this is almost worth seeing in a so-bad-it’s-good sort of way, but as a straightforward thriller it’s all over the place, thanks to a wildly lurching tone and an unfocused script. It’s not unwatchable though, and with a prevailing wind, it could end up with a cult following.
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