This Tempting Madness — This Tempting Madness (VOD)

Here’s a 2025 psychological thriller from director Jennifer E. Montgomery, who co-wrote the script with cinematographer Andrew Davis, This Tempting Madness is a committed take on a familiar tale of paranoia, mistrust and a breakdown of reality.

When Mia (Simone Ashley) wakes from a dramatic multi-storey fall at an airport, she’s faced with debilitating surgery on her broken jaw while she pieces together what happened. Her husband has been arrested as apparently incriminating CCTV footage shows him attempting to murder her, but as she’s torn between him and her family, it’s increasingly clear that things don’t add up.

The story of an amnesiac patient waking from a coma to piece together a mystery that reaches deep into their apparently perfect life is a well-known one. It cuts to some of the most famous psychological thrillers, including Spellbound (1945), Memento (2000), and Before I Go to Sleep (2014). While This Tempting Madness doesn’t make the top tier—it sits more comfortably with Harlan Coben mysteries on streaming services—some great casting and gnarly body horror keep it watchable.

The thriller’s main attraction is Ashley in the lead role. Stepping out of Bridgerton with this complex leading part, she shines among an otherwise patchy cast. Mia is put through the wringer, and the actress gives it everything. In the topsy-turvy world of misinformation, red herrings and scrambled memories, it shows up some other performances in a film that prioritises plot over characterisation.

This Tempting Madness sets out a pretty standard stall for most of its run-time. There’s a slickness to the production, although some of the production design, and a lot of the blocking within it, is a bit uninspired. As Mia tries to piece together her fragmented memory, the imagery can also feel a bit crowded out by the dialogue, particularly from some superfluous characters—the pretty useless Detective Colton (Mojean Aria doing his best) is a prime example. On the other side, there’s more than enough of the heavy symbolism that creeps in, especially the giant red circle in Mia’s house. This Tempting Madness is at its best when it lets loose a little bit, and the transitions between the fractured reality Mia’s experiencing improve over the run-time. Near the end, there’s a fabulously staged transition through a mirror.

It’s around then, as the twists kick in around the pretty small pool of potential wrong’uns, that the revelations feel almost deliberately underplayed. It’s a shame it unravels so clumsily, as Montgomery and Davis have taken pains to make pain a key part of the build-up.

This Tempting Madness is marked out by its use of physical injuries. The fall that opens the film is compounded by graphic X-ray film and, at points, the bloody impact of the pins that piece together her lower face. It’s an interesting commitment to body horror that shows how the young wife and mother has been physically broken as she fights against her shattered mind.

Thanks to Ashley weathering the injuries (and the sound effects and make-up really do make her shattered face feel devastating), This Tempting Madness is a fairly distracting night in with a thriller, even if it doesn’t land its twists as well as it should.