Deadly Vows

Bluesky

With a title which makes it sound like a straight-to-VHS erotic thriller, and is scarcely necessary given the weight of ominous music poured over the wedding festivities in its opening scene, Jared Cohn and Bella Bahar Danesh’s thriller, inspired by true events, gets off to a shaky start and has to work hard to recover. The same could be said for the marriage. When, wasting no time, we flash forward four years to a dark bedroom in Las Vegas, wife Darya (Shiva Negar) is planning to leave, a bag slung over her shoulder as she tries to wake baby Natasha without making a noise. Unfortunately, she isn’t quiet enough, and husband Sam (Peter Facinelli) is unforgiving, wrapping his hands around her throat.

Forwards we go again; Natasha (Ellen Nikbakht) is now a teenager with a brother of a similar age, Brandon (Kinan Cruz); Darya has qualified as a doctor and is running a string of nonprofit clinic focused on orphans and victims of domestic violence. The three of them live in a spacious house by themselves and seem relaxed and happy; Sam is out of their lives. Until, that is, they get an unexpected visit from the police, who break the news that a hit has been put out on Darya. They know it’s Sam, but don’t have enough evidence to take action. Until that happens, the family is urged to get out of town.

When a film is based on real events and those events are as commonplace as domestic abuse and threats upon leaving, you need to work a little harder to make a story stand out. There’s an obvious need for narratives like this and they can sometimes be the things that tip the balance, that help people realise they’re in trouble and deserve better, but in order to succeed they need to connect more widely than that, and most of them are very similar. Deadly Vows finds some distinction in its heroine’s past, showing us how she was sent out of Iran during the 1978 revolution and touching on some of the ugly things that refugees often have to cope with along the way. The plight of women who remained in Iran feels like a natural parallel for the central theme, but is undermined somewhat by the ease with which family members also seem to have escaped. There’s no real development of any of this material so it remains incidental, functioning as window dressing rather than contributing any depth.

The film takes a similarly stand-offish approach to Darya’s developing romantic relationship with her friend Max (Shane West), who helps the family to hide. It’s acknowledged, but almost sheepishly, as if addressing it were an unreasonable intrusion. This means that we have little opportunity to explore the complex issues around trust, prioritisation and guilt that inevitably attend it. The film becomes a mere series of incidents, superficial, where a little more development could have made a big difference.

There’s a deliberate decision here to imply rather than show most of the violence. This not only reduces the risk of triggering panic attacks in viewers who have been on the receiving end of such things, but brings us a little closer to Darya’s experience as a woman in constant denial. She loves Sam – cares for him even after they’re separated – and he does the usual thing, apologising, reminding her how much he does for her, saying that he doesn’t want to be like that – everything short of making an actual effort to change. Billy Zane put this in perspective as a detective who has seen plenty of similar stuff in the past. As Darya comes to terms with what has really been happening, she needs to work out how to move forward and find the emotional distance that will let her live on her own terms. The film, however, has less room for manoeuvre.

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