2008's The Perfect Assistant is probably the most reserved Lifetime flick that ever came down the pike. I mean I'm not saying it's ineffective but director Douglas Jackson would rather douse you in the art of character study and take his time as opposed to just rolling out the thriller schlock. "There's a lot of stuff here that doesn't make sense". Sure it does. Look closer silly wabbit!
Starring Josie Davis, Rachel Hunter, and Chris Potter, "Perfect Assistant" starts from I suppose, the middle and builds tension inch by careful inch. So yeah, it's not a violent Lifetime endeavor nor does it go over the top but its quiet tone and "I'm God's lonely man" (or in this case woman) air gives you the delicate willies.
Josie Davis, a veteran of TV and film, plays "Perfect Assistant's" lead in Rachel Partson, an administrative PA who becomes obsessed with her boss to the point where she'll do anything (including murder and manipulation) to eventually marry him one day.
Davis, well she creates the Rachel persona from the ground up, so when the final confrontation occurs as she's toting a gat at a restaurant, you feel her dejection and cray cray heartache. Josie's Rachel is easy on the eyes but a sad sack, a girl who talks to herself, lives with an irksome roommate, and readily thumbs her way into everyone's beeswax. So OK, you don't see Rachel doing a lot of offing in "Perfect Assistant" but it's what you don't discern or imagine she did in the past that will make your blood curdle. I mean at one point in the pic she says that both of her parents are dead. You wonder if good old "Rach" had a hand in that partaking. Ugh.
In hindsight, The Perfect Assistant is not trashy, Lifetime Network flare nor does it possess any type of style or modus operandi. Its strength lies in putting Davis in almost every frame, as her creeper plight alone feels like an eldritch, first-person narrative. Cared "assistant".
Written by Jesse Burleson
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