Damian Hurley's movie panned by critics as 'preposterous'

Damian Hurley's movie Strictly Confidential has been panned by critics as "preposterous".

Elizabeth Hurley stars in her son's directorial debut, Strictly Confidential, which has been written off by cinema critics.

Four days after its UK release, the movie has achieved a 9% rating on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, pushing it into the "Rotten" category.

Damian, 22, wrote and directed the film, which stars his real-life mother Elizabeth, 58, as the grieving mother of a young woman who died under mysterious circumstances.

Press materials for the movie describe it as "a sensual thriller with a devilish twist... a seductive world of sex, betrayal and murder."

However, critics have overwhelmingly disagreed.

"Deadly secrets are spilled with the lackadaisical plop of a daytime soap," wrote the Daily Telegraph's Tim Robey.

"Strictly Confidential looks like a parody of a bad movie, but it's unfortunately no joke," wrote Carla Hay of Culture Mix. "This horrendous drama, which has a tawdry plot about privileged people with sordid secrets, is a time-wasting failure for everyone involved."

Avi Offer of the NYC Movie Guru blog compared the movie unfavourably to hit Netflix whodunit, Knives Out.

"A clunky, convoluted and preposterous mess with enough unintentional laughs to make it a guilty pleasure," he wrote. "Strictly Confidential is like an erotic version of Knives Out without the comedy, suspense or Benoit Blanc."

While Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian jokingly likened Strictly Confidential to a daytime soap opera.

"Once you get to the big reveal, you feel like you've sat through a hundred episodes of a saucy daytime soap with the saucy bits cut out," he wrote.