Marriages can be tricky to navigate. Even the healthiest of relationships are bound to go through choppy waters from time to time. When couples decide to throw chum into those murky tides, it can make the complications insurmountable. For Kristina and Robert, the couple at the center of director Miles Doleac’s musical thriller Open, throwing that chum into the water attracts a predator neither are prepared for.

At first glance, Kristina (Lindsay Anne Williams) and Robert (Miles Doleac) appear to be a normal couple in the throes of attempting to add excitement into their relationship. They’ve recently decided to go “open,” by allowing each other to see and date other people outside of the marriage, and have an established set of rules to keep themselves within the boundaries of what they’re comfortable with. Kristina’s first date to explore this new concept is with washed up former tv star Erik LaRue (Jeremy London). Erik just so happens to be an old childhood crush of Kristina’s, and her excitement and nervousness is palpable. While initially the two seem awkward together, the ice is quickly broken, and all appears to be going well. 

Cut to early next morning, when Kristina wakes up in Erik’s bed in a panic, realizing she’s broken one of the primary rules of her and Robert’s arrangement regarding no overnight stays. She hastily leaves for home, where she’s met with an understandably upset Robert, but the two patch things up and agree to continue exploring their agreement.

The scenario quickly dissolves once Erik begins exhibiting erratic behavior, causing both Kristina and Robert to second guess his motives. When Kristina unexpectedly finds herself pregnant, she attempts to break it off with Erik to focus on her family, but his demeanor spirals from concerning to outright dangerous and alarming. As they try in vain to rid themselves of him, the threat to their lives becomes a race to outwit a deranged stalker.

While the plot points of this story easily hold their own weight to provide tension, there’s the unique (and at times confusing) extra layer of musical montages thrown in throughout the film. Kristina often has daydreams (or are they hallucinations?) where she’s the singer of a 1980’s glam rock band, with songs that narrate her current problems in amusing ways. The lyrics of these songs come off as cheesy and terrible, but that’s the point. This is a fantasy, and with that comes a sense of absurdity and irrational logic. Other people in her life make guest appearances as members of the band, adding to the wackiness of the scenes.

At first, the music scenes feel exceedingly out of place. There’s an implication that they’re meant to add a break in tension and give a personal narrative perspective on Kristina’s thoughts, but the timing of when they appear comes off as awkward. In this way, it takes the viewer out of the intense storyline with how preposterous they are. Somehow, though, somewhere along the way, they become entertaining, and even joyfully anticipatory.

The performances from the three main cast members are all impressive – particularly from London, who can expertly toggle back and forth between charming and unhinged. The fact that Doleac and Williams are married in real life helps add to their natural chemistry, even when their characters are in a point of contention. 

The main weakness with Open is that it struggles under its own weight. With a runtime just under two hours, it could easily stand to trim a good 15-20 min of extraneous material, including a few of those musical numbers, as amusing as they may be. It begins to drag heavily in the middle, right when the stakes are made clear, which should be a time when the viewer’s focus is held the most.

“Tense” and “fun” are two words you typically wouldn’t see together to describe a melodramatic thriller, yet it somehow fits perfectly to sum up Open. If it could have been edited down to remove unnecessary scenes, this would be one heck of an irreverent thrill ride from start to finish, but still finds a way to be compelling despite the sluggish points.