Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough

In Blue Bay, Florida, Marie Clifton is about to turn eighteen and come into her late mother's fortune, which includes a pair of enormously valuable diamonds known as the Mother and the Daughter. Her stepfather, Jay, is accused of assaulting Elena Sandoval, a young woman with a scandalous reputation in town, and Marie must decide whether to use the diamonds to help defend him. Her choice sets off a chain of deceit, blackmail and eventually murder, drawing in an FBI agent who has to work out who is innocent, who is guilty, and who has the rightful claim to the stones.

This is the third entry in the Wild Things series, following the 1998 original and its 2003 sequel, and it returns to the same territory of sex, money and betrayal. Jay Lowi directed it, his second feature after Tangled in 2001, from a screenplay by Andy Hurst and Ross Helford. Serah D'Laine plays Marie, Sandra McCoy plays Elena, and Linden Ashby appears as Detective Michael Morrison, with Claire Coffee and Michael Mantell among the large credited company.

Released in 2005 with a running time of 87 minutes, the film drew modest audience numbers rather than praise: on IMDb it holds a rating of 4.5 from roughly 5,700 votes, and on TMDB it sits at 5 out of 10 from about 170 votes. That gap in vote totals indicates a small, mostly home-viewing audience for this direct-to-video thriller.