A slickly produced movie about a homicidal screenwriter who specializes (surprise, surprise) in beautiful young women, USA Network's "Cabin by the Lake" has a nasty, generally unpleasant air about it.
Stanley Caldwell (portrayed with cold efficiency by Judd Nelson) is your average Hollywood scribe: plain-looking, self-absorbed, obsessed with morbid thoughts of death and violence. But Caldwell takes the motto of "write what you know" a little too seriously. Like a trashy, modern-day Bluebeard, he uses a nearby lake to keep an underwater garden of the decaying beauties he has murdered in order to write knowledgeably about the fear in their eyes.
Everything is hunky-dory for Caldwell, until the day he kidnaps Mallory (Hedy Burress), a strong-willed young lady who not only manages to escape her watery grave but also fights her sadistic captor with his own weapon: psychological manipulation.
There are also several one-dimensional characters (a pushy, shallow agent, an effeminate director and an innocent, provincial sheriff), an unexplained romance between Mallory and the sheriff, a gimmick-ridden search for the killer that involves nifty underwater cameras and special effects, and enough ludicrous plot points to fill the lake where the victims are dumped.