This Tempting Madness – Review
There are films that keep you guessing because they carefully hide the answers, and then there are films that make you question whether you’re even asking the right questions. This Tempting Madness, inspired by a true story, falls firmly into the latter.
Directed by Jennifer E. Montgomery and led by Simone Ashley (Bridgerton), the psychological thriller follows Mia, a woman who wakes from a coma after a devastating fall with serious injuries and significant gaps in her memory. Her husband, Jake (Austin Stowell), has been accused of attempting to kill her, but Mia can’t remember enough about what happened to know whether that’s true. From there, the film becomes less about solving a mystery and more about trying to experience one through the eyes of someone who can’t completely trust her own mind. That distinction matters, because This Tempting Madness isn’t always an easy film to follow.
Let’s get this out of the way first: this is a slow burn. A very slow burn. Anyone expecting a conventional thriller filled with twists, revelations and constant momentum may find the first half particularly challenging. The film is far more interested in creating unease than rushing towards answers. There are long stretches where seemingly very little happens, conversations linger, memories appear without immediately explaining themselves, and scenes occasionally feel disconnected from those surrounding them. Normally, that might simply be a pacing problem. Here, though, there’s an argument that at least some of the frustration is intentional, because Mia doesn’t understand what’s happening either, and the film effectively asks us to experience that uncertainty with her.
The structure isn’t simply telling us Mia is confused, it’s actively trying to make us feel some of that confusion ourselves. Whether that works will probably depend enormously on the viewer.
The other thing worth knowing before watching is that the film isn’t entirely linear. It moves between the present, memories, fragments of the past and Mia’s increasingly unreliable perception of events, sometimes without making the transition particularly obvious. There were moments where I genuinely wondered whether I’d missed something. Who are we supposed to trust? When exactly did this happen? Is this a memory, or is it actually happening? Occasionally the answer is simply: we don’t know yet, and that can make the film feel muddled rather than mysterious at times. The plotting isn’t always as precise as the film’s visual language, and certain emotional or narrative jumps could have benefited from a little more clarity. But strangely, I don’t think I’d want it completely cleaned up either. Making everything perfectly understandable would undermine the perspective the film is trying to create; Mia is reconstructing her life from fragments, and we’re effectively doing the same thing alongside her.
The biggest reason it works as well as it does is Simone Ashley. She has to carry an enormous amount of the film because almost everything is filtered through Mia, who needs to be frightened, suspicious, vulnerable, angry, loving and deeply uncertain, sometimes all within the same sequence, all while recovering from catastrophic physical injuries and discovering the life she remembers might not resemble the life she was actually living. More importantly, Ashley makes Mia compelling even when the screenplay deliberately withholds information from us. There are stretches where we understand very little about what’s happening, yet she gives us enough emotionally to stay invested in finding out.
The central mystery initially appears straightforward, but the film gradually becomes interested in something much more uncomfortable: what happens when every version of the truth comes from somebody who might have a reason to manipulate you? Mia’s family believes Jake is dangerous. Jake offers Mia another interpretation. Mia begins questioning her family’s motives, then she questions Jake, and eventually she has to question herself. The result is an increasingly claustrophobic game of psychological manipulation where certainty constantly slips away just as it appears within reach. Austin Stowell’s Jake works particularly well because the character is difficult to settle on, unsettling in some moments and genuinely sympathetic in others, and the dreamlike cinematography in his scenes adds to that sense of not quite knowing what we’re supposed to be feeling about him. That ambiguity is where the film is at its strongest, and probably its most frustrating.
Unfortunately, some of the supporting characters don’t get the same attention. Suraj Sharma’s Ajay in particular feels like a character who could have been explored considerably further, given how important he becomes to Mia’s understanding of events. It’s one of several moments where you sense another ten or fifteen minutes of character development might have strengthened the film, though given how deliberately slow the existing 90 odd minutes already are, more runtime might just have created a different problem entirely.
Where the narrative occasionally feels uncertain, the filmmaking itself feels surprisingly assured. Montgomery and cinematographer Andrew Davis use distorted perspectives, unusual lenses, recurring imagery and increasingly unstable camerawork to represent Mia’s psychological state. The opening fall is particularly striking and becomes an image the film keeps returning to, and there are circles, reflections and visual echoes throughout that keep things interesting even when the narrative itself isn’t. The sound design deserves credit too: rather than simply accompanying Mia’s deteriorating sense of reality, the score and soundscape actively contribute to it, less about jump scares and more about a constant low-level sense that something isn’t quite right.
The pacing is testing, the timeline can be confusing, certain characters feel underwritten, and some ideas are repeated when they could have been developed further. After spending so long patiently constructing its mystery, the final act arguably moves through some of its biggest developments faster than expected. But none of that made me dislike the film, in some ways it made it more interesting. This feels like a filmmaker attempting something quite specific rather than constructing a psychological thriller to formula, and not every decision lands, but there’s a real identity to it. Once you understand where certain pieces belong, earlier moments start looking different, and things that felt unnecessarily confusing begin making sense once you view them as Mia’s experience rather than an objective account of events. It might even be one of those films that benefits from a second viewing, although honestly, I doubt I’ll ever return to it.
If you want a fast-moving psychological thriller that introduces a mystery, scatters clues and neatly explains everything before the credits roll, this probably isn’t it. It’s slower, stranger and considerably less interested in holding your hand. But give yourself over to its deliberately fractured storytelling and there’s plenty to appreciate: striking cinematography, an oppressive atmosphere, an interesting exploration of memory and manipulation, and above all, an excellent central performance from Simone Ashley. It’s messy in places, frustrating in others, and there will almost certainly be moments where you wonder whether any of it makes sense. Oddly enough, that’s also part of what makes it work.
A flawed but fascinating slow-burn thriller, elevated considerably by Simone Ashley and a willingness to leave both its protagonist and its audience searching for answers.
On UK digital platforms 10 August 2026 from Plaion Pictures
