Trash I Saw On Lifetime: Cyber Seduction

I'm a fan of the old exploitation movies; the kind of movies about a scandalous or hot-button issue filmed on a shoe-string budget and rushed to drive-ins & decaying grindhouse theaters to turn a quick profit while the subject was still relevant. And while this sort of movie doesn't often get made for theatrical release anymore, they're still being made for television. Lifetime's original movies are a goldmine for trash movie aficionados. Case in point: Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life...

Justin has a mediocre but stable life. He's a good student and the star of his high school's swim team. His swimming prowess has begun to make him popular with the cool kids. He has an attractive but prudish girlfriend, a mother prone to overreacting, a passive father, and an impressionable younger brother. But Justin's entire life collapses like a house of cards when he innocently clicks on a link to a porn site sent to him by his friend.

At that very moment, Justin becomes obsessed with internet pornography. And energy drinks. But, oddly enough, NOT masturbation. Apparently, Justin succeeded where I failed; in replacing jacking off with Rock Star. If the kid would have just rubbed one out, his entire life would still be fine. Justin didn't...

The energy drinks keep Justin awake late one night, and while looking at what passes for internet porn on Lifetime, his mother barges into his room to see why he isn't asleep. He quickly tries to turn off the computer, but his mother saw the vaguely lurid images. She attempts to go back to bed, but she's just too shaken up over the whole thing, so she decides to wake up her husband in the middle of the night and demand he talk to Justin about the evils of pornography. He tells her that Justin is a normal boy, but that only angers his cunt of a wife, so he has to promise to give Justin a vague lecture later so his nagging wife will let him sleep.

The next day, Justin's life starts its downward spiral when he underperforms at swimming practice. To make it worse, Justin begins to notice that high school girls dress like sluts. And he likes it! In just two days, internet porn causes Justin to objectify every woman he sees. His father's halfhearted lecture doesn't help matters, and Justin's appetite for porn and Red Bull grows.

A day or two later, Justin is viewing more porn when his younger brother busts him and insists that he get to look at the porno or he'll tell mom. Jesus Christ, Justin! Lock your fucking door already. Justin reluctantly obliges and it fries his little bro's brain! But Justin just can't stop showing porn to others; it's the nature of the beast!

Soon after ruining his brother's life, Justin is hanging out at Timmy's house. Timmy is the guy who got Justin hooked on the hard stuff by sending him the link at the beginning of the movie. Instead of playing more video games, Justin suggests they look up porn and pulls up some latex fetish site that looked more like an ad to a performance art showcase than hardcore pornography. But it's apparently too much for Timmy, who isn't cool with this "twisted" stuff, and Justin leaves.

In the safety of his own room, Justin visits the webcam site of the local high school slut/porn star and begins chatting with her while drinking an obscene amount of Red Bull. He tells her how "Amaaaaazing" she is. Can Justin really be considering having sex with the easy hot chick instead of waiting for his wholesome girlfriend's vagina to defrost?

If this brief synopsis of the first half of the movie sounds a bit over the top, it's got NOTHING on the second half of the movie. Some highlights of the rest include:

• Justin being ostracized by his peers.

• The Virgin Vaginas!

• Justin getting suspended from school.

• Justin's mom seeking the guidance of a friend whose "marriage was destroyed because of internet pornography."

• Justin seeking out sleazy back rooms in the bad part of town to get his porn fix.

• A vicious beating.

• And one of the most inexplicable scenes in the history of motion pictures, which can only be hinted at with this picture...


None of those spoilers can detract from the glorious train wreck that is Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life. Although Lifetime touted this movie as a provocative depiction of a modern social ill, it's got the accuracy and sensibility of Reefer Madness. The director is the same guy who directed Friday the 13th Part VI. He also directed the equally absurd Lifetime classic, She's Too Young, about the freshman class blowjob syphilis outbreak.

Probably because Lifetime doesn't want us watching their movies ironically, Cyber Seduction is not available on DVD. You might be able to download it somewhere, or you can watch the movie in installments on YouTube. If you're lucky enough to get Lifetime or the Lifetime Movie Network, you can always check their listings (it isn't scheduled to air again this month). This movie must be viewed in groups, and it doesn't hurt to have a few drinks handy.