In the briskly-paced thriller This Tempting Madness, Mia (Simone Ashley) emerges from a coma, and can’t remember the fall that caused her critical injuries. She learns that her husband has been jailed for trying to kill her, but she can’t accept that explanation. She embarks on an investigation to find out what really happened, and begins to unspool the mystery, uncovering ever darker discoveries.
Is she being gaslighted? Does her family have a grudge? And what is she herself capable of? There are plenty of surprises in the story.
Simone Ashley (Bridgerton) is believable as Mia yo-yos between theories of what has occurred, and she has a magnetic presence onscreen.
This is the first feature for director Jennifer E. Montgomery, who co-wrote the screenplay with her husband Andrew M. Davis. Both the hoppin’ pace of the movie and the twisty screenplay are strong work,
This Tempting Madness is a neo-noir, and there is so much amnesia in classic film noir that it constitutes the sub-genre of Amnesia Noir – High Wall, Somewhere in the Night, Crack-Up, Spellbound, Deadline at Dawn, The Snake Pit, The Clay Pigeon, The Long Wait and many more. But the screenplay for This Tempting Madness was inspired (surprisingly) by a true story.
I screened This Tempting Madness for the 2026 SLO Film Fest, where I highlighted it in my best of fest post, . This Tempting Madness opens June 12, including at some Laemmle theaters in LA.