STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL Trailer (2024) Elizabeth Hurley, Georgia Lock

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL Trailer (2024) Elizabeth Hurley, Georgia Lock

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL Trailer (2024) Elizabeth Hurley, Georgia Lock, Drama, Thriller Movie
© 2024 - Lionsgate

Damian Hurley cooked up a seductive new thriller — and enlisted mom Elizabeth Hurley for a key role.

PEOPLE is exclusively debuting the first trailer for Strictly Confidential, which is billed as a "sensual thriller with a devilish twist" and serves as the feature directorial debut for Damian, 21.

As the plot goes, "On the anniversary of Rebecca’s (Lauren McQueen) death, Mia (Georgia Lock) returns to the Caribbean paradise where she and her best friend shared her final days."

"As Mia and sets out to unravel the mysterious events of her passing, old passions rise, new secrets are uncovered, and Mia is pulled into a seductive world of sex, betrayal and murder."

Damian tells PEOPLE that his movie-star mom, 58, "promised" years ago that she'd star in his first film, and she "dropped everything" to participate.
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Elizabeth Hurley - Strictly Confidential
Elizabeth Hurley in "Strictly Confidential". COURTESY OF LIONSGATE
"During the making of my first-ever short film back in 2010 when I was 8, my mother promised me she’d be in my first feature. True to her word, the minute Strictly Confidential was green-lit, my mother dropped everything and raced out to the Caribbean to help," he says.

While he says the "power dynamic" between a director and an actor can be "complicated at the best of times," Damian says about working with his mother: "It was a joy to come to work and tackle each day together."

Elizabeth Hurley - Strictly Confidential
"Strictly Confidential". COURTESY OF LIONSGATE
"We only had 18 days to shoot the whole film, so our twin-like telepathy was invaluable throughout," says Damian, who also worked with Elizabeth on her series The Royals.

The actor-model acknowledges that writing and directing a feature film is something "not many have the opportunity" to do at "such a young age and so early in their careers." Still, he says the experience was "both immensely challenging and genuinely thrilling."

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Damian Hurley and Elizabeth Hurley at Tod's Cocktail Party and Dinner as part of New York Ready to Wear Fashion Week held on February 13, 2024 in New York, New York
Damian Hurley and Elizabeth Hurley on Feb. 13, 2024. GILBERT FLORES/WWD VIA GETTY
"To work tirelessly alongside such a committed and talented cast was truly inspiring," he adds. "I’m eternally grateful to all involved for trusting and believing in me."

On Instagram back in December 2022, Damian celebrated the team completing filming on Strictly Confidential, sharing behind-the-scenes photos on Instagram and giving a shout-out to "my beautiful and supreme mother."

"Working together was a dream," he added at the time, also expressing he is "so so proud of this film."

Strictly Confidential is in theaters and on digital April 5.

“Some secrets are meant to stay buried” says the ad line for “Strictly Confidential.” But you’d need a sizable underground bunker to contain all the effortfully shocking revelations sprung in this very silly sudser, which starts out looking like an erotic thriller-mystery, then descends into a series of flashback-laden explication monologues more apt for “Dynasty” than Agatha Christie.

Damian Hurley’s directorial feature, with famous mum Elizabeth top-billed and producing, provides several hardbodied younger performers opportunity to model clothes and approximate recognizable human emotions on the coastline of tax haven island nation Saint Kitts and Nevis. But what was likely an enjoyable working Caribbean vacation for cast and crew proves somewhat labored for viewers. Nonetheless, watched in the right spirit, with appropriate libations, it could prove quite entertaining … if not in the way presumably intended. Lionsgate is releasing to U.S. theaters, digital and on-demand platforms on April 5.

A note of fashion/travel advertisement is struck immediately with images of bikinied thespians floating in clear blue waters, writhing in the arms of muscular shirtless men, and so forth — an opening montage not elevated when it turns out to be dreamt by someone bathing in the requisite luxury bathtub surrounded by (doubtless scented) candles.

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That someone is Mia (Georgia Lock), who seems to wake from another such vaguely troubling reverie every 20 minutes or so here. She is the erstwhile best friend of Rebecca (Lauren McQueen), who presumably drowned herself last summer. But as the reasons for suicide were obscure, her body remains unfound, and her father had also died a rather murky death just weeks prior, the whole affair as yet lacks “closure.”

That emotional effect is exactly what’s being sought by mother Lily (Hurley) and surviving eldest daughter Jemma (Genevieve Gaunt) in their inviting Rebecca’s usual friends back for another holiday, the first since tragedy struck. Still traumatized, they’ve dropped contact with one another since, Mia even dumping boyfriend James (Freddie Thorp). So it’s a reunion for the aforementioned, as well as Rebecca’s own boyfriend Will (Max Parker), plus everyone’s friend Natasha (Pear Chiravara), who for some reason now works as an upscale stripper in a posh club. (This is the sort of movie in which almost no one seems to have a vocation or job, but we assume they are all trustafarians.)

Mia has a lot of questions about what happened last summer. No one else wants to talk about it — albeit not from painful grief, it turns out. Rather, it’s because they’ve all got guilty secrets to hide. They hide them pretty poorly, since gape-mouthed Mia keeps walking in on people caught making out with the “wrong” other party.

There are also flashbacks to other makeout scenes, though the initial steamy musk redolent of vintage “Skinemax” and Zalman King movies proves deceptive. Eventually the film grows less interested in softcore suggestiveness than murder-mystery-adjacent plot mechanizations as convoluted (and flashback-laden) as they are increasingly ridiculous.

Somewhere around the two-thirds mark, escalating levels of pure tosh begin to perversely work in the movie’s favor. What had been a mildly scenic if paper-thin diversion turns into the kind of joint whose narrative big reveals also trigger big laughs — with considerable help from hackneyed dialogue and some awkward acting moments. The histrionic burden falls heaviest on Lock, who cannot be said to emerge unscathed.

But in truth, as written and directed, these roles might flummox the most talented interpreters. Plausibility of action and psychology appears to have taken a distant back seat to concerns of how the performers look in the variably skimpy or low-cut costumes by Gabbi Edmunds. Likewise, George Burt’s widescreen cinematography eschews any suspenseful atmospherics in favor of a bright, bland showcasing of handsome getaway decor (Tom Downey is the production designer) and attractive beach views. Michael Richard Plowman’s original score further underlines that we’re basically watching a cheesy soap opera in B-movie form.

Purportedly shot in just 18 days, “Strictly Confidential” is most kindly viewed as on-the-job training for the junior Hurley, who under those circumstances acquits himself well. His film has sufficient professional polish and passable entertainment value, intentional or otherwise. But one assumes his scriptwriting did not suffer from the same time constriction, in which case that labor should definitely be left to others in future projects.