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Bad Romance: The Vicky White Story (2023)

So very well done

Bad Romance: The Vicky White Story

I'll say it again for the umpteenth time: Lifetime makes stellar, great, riveting true crime flicks - but usually only mediocre-bordering-on-juvenile fiction. You'd never know it was the same production company making these movies. They're spot-on with everything in true crime, but they're like 4th graders making classroom videos with most of the fictional stories.

I followed this news-story closely when it happened, so it was interesting to see the movie and wonder/speculate about how alike the characters portrayed here were to the real "Mr. And Mrs. White". It always ends with me dwelling on the sadness of Vicky making the split decision to take her own life and being sure it was the right and only thing to do. Such a shame and a waste that a good, decent person and star employee of many years suddenly "broke bad" - ending in her doom.

BTW, the part where she was talking to her mom outside while holding her dog, and she accidentally cuffed his nose while motioning back at her house - it was an obvious goof that they decided to leave in and not shoot the scene over. I love how she ad-libbed a quick, sincere apology to the dog. The only other goof I noticed: when Casey and Vicky were in the convenience store and the cashier kept scanning each item on the counter over and over while fixedly staring at Vicky, when their photos appeared on the TV screen above.

My ONLY small complaint: it was sometimes difficult to understand what Casey said, due to him running his words together. But no other actor could have played the guy as well as he did.

I make sure to watch this every time I can catch it on TV. I usually only write complaining reviews here, pointing out the bad acting, dialogue, plotholes, mistakes, etc., of most of the LMN fictional stuff, so this is a rare glowing-with-praise gushing review of a Lifetime creation from me because it deserves recognition. The acting - especially of the two leads - was excellent; they both deserve Emmys. And the depiction and filming of their lives and environments so very real/authentic.

Definitely recommended to those who appreciate well-done true crime re-enactions - this is just sooooo good, whether you followed the news story when it happened or not.

Grade A / 9 out of 10.

Locked in My House (2024)

One of THE stupidest movies ever on Lifetime

Locked in My House

The cast and crew actually got paid real money for this thing??

What a stupid premise: kidnap a doctor to get the time to find evidence for his crimes. Risk going to prison for decades for kidnapping....and what about having to feed him? It never once showed him eating which would be impossible to do with his hands tied - did she sit and spoonfeed him 2-3 times a day??

I KNEW the doctor/villain would escape into the house eventually.

I KNEW the husband would come back from his trip unexpectedly early.

I KNEW the female lead/Caris would come out of the whole mess smelling like a rose.

(And apparently all the plastic surgery Damon Runyan obviously had is the reason it's been so long between LMN movies for him - long recovery time.)

Everything in this so-called movie was stupid. LMN movies seem to be getting worse as the years go on (except their true crime movies, which are nothing short of excellent).

I can't decide which was stupider: loading the villain into her car and taking him to her house to keep tied up in her basement for who knows how long, OR brazenly walking into his clinic at night with the thug Rodney there inside, and taking the risk of being caught by said thug whilst copying files from the villain's laptop to a thumb drive in his office, with Thug Rodney right outside in the hallway! Then she hides behind the desk when he enters the office, with the lit-up laptop screen facing the door where TR comes in and stands looking around. He would've easily seen the light from the laptop screen as he stood there. But since the crew for this movie is a group of seemingly recent elementary school grads, he didn't, and turned around and left, closing the door behind him. And then Caris (at least they're trying to use different names other than the usual Sarah/Allison/Hannah/Claire/Anna/Emma) gets up and walks out of the office with Thug Rodney nearby since HE HAD JUST LEFT THAT OFFICE. They practically crossed paths, when she was supposedly trying to sneak in and out without him knowing. She knowingly risked her life and barely got away with him chasing close behind. I mean, how stupid can an educated, intelligent, sensible, common sense woman possibly be??

I'm mad at myself for wasting even this much time writing about the thing.

Grade F / 1 out of 10.

Surviving the Sleepover (2024)

Too slow and boring

Surviving the Sleepover

Plotline: new girl in town starting new school gets invited by mean rich girl to her mansion for sleepover with mean girl's friends. Mean girl has ulterior motive which is exacerbated at mansion when mean girl's stepbrother/love interest shows attraction to new girl, which strengthens mean girl's plot to get revenge. Which leads me to my main complaint about this movie: there is no hint or mention as to the fate of mean girl Melissa at the end, after her attempts at revenge. Kind of frustrating to be left hanging, but I suppose we're left to assume that due to her young age and since no one was killed, she most likely went on to receive psychiatric help in lieu of criminal charges.

Pace too slow with boring plot. Entire movie could've been an hour long from start to finish with so little happening and quicker pace. And the female lead 'Hannah' was not a good actress. On top of bad acting, she seemed to be smiling in almost every scene she was in, no matter what lines she was saying.

Yet another 'Hannah' in a long line of Lifetime's same female names they use over and over and over: Hannah, Sarah, Allison, Ashley, Abby, Melissa, Maggie, Grace, Claire, Emily/Emma, etc., ad nauseam. As I've said in several of my imdb reviews, there are so many other names in the world, for example - 'Violet' in the recent 'She's Obsessed With My Husband'. FINALLY a different name used for a female character, which was a pleasant surprise.

Soooo tired of the worn out STUPID Lifetime trope of the person who calls police on the villain turning their back to the villain as they start the call, leaving them wide open for the villain to come up behind them with skillet/hammer/board/crowbar/poker/bat/whatever weapon they can grab and knock them out. The movie in which this happens the most is the aforementioned 'She's Obsessed With My Husband' - at least three times - when once per movie is too much/bad enough. Of course, if it didn't happen (as it never would in real life since no one's that dumb), then there would be no more action and violence and suspense and the movie would be over.

I realize no effort is ever made to try to cast parents and their kids - or siblings - who look at least somewhat alike or like they come from the same family, but this was ridiculous: Hannah looked nothing like her mother. In fact, Abby looked like she could actually be the woman's daughter in real life; they looked so much alike. I've never mentioned that before in my reviews because there's always the fact that the offspring could look like the parent we don't see - in this case, Hannah's dad. But there should be more effort made to have the kids look like the parent(s) in the movie.

All in all, a disappointment and time wasted on yet more below average LMN fodder.

Grade D / 2 out of 10.

The Ex Obsession (2022)

What in the WORLD?!

The Ex-Obsession

Absolutely ridiculous from beginning to end. Obviously geared toward the dumbest of audiences. Although, I'm pretty sure a 5th grader would see it as an insult to his/her intelligence.

In a nutshell, a sociopathic narcissist woman (Kim) starts a massive gaslighting plot against her husband (John) - including murder - to frame him. (And btw, the synopsis here on imdb is incorrect - John does not accidentally kill the ex-boyfriend (Grant) as it says; Kim purposely kills him when he regains consciousness after being strangled by John.) Part of the convoluted plot is Kim ordering John to start "becoming" Grant by acting and dressing like him (for whatever reason). John is Kim's puppet - he does whatever she orders him to do, without question or hesitation: "Bury the body" - "Go order a cup of coffee for me like Grant would" - "Seduce me exactly like Grant used to", etc. Never once does he ask the simple logical question - "Why?" - like I was wondering. It wasn't to replace Grant to cover up his murder, so what was the reason? Part of the end result of driving him crazy? What if it hadn't worked out that way?

So Ms. Sociopath Narcissist drove off with a satisfied smirk on her face, after manipulating her weak husband into insanity and arrest for murder. So now she doesn't have his income to support her since her own fashion business isn't exactly thriving.......so what was the point?

Yet another Lifetime disaster. Waste of time.

And when will Lifetime ever stop using the same common names over and over in most of their dime-a-dozen movies? "John" - really? The most common man's name of all? It's a constant complaint of mine, especially with the names of the lead and/or secondary female characters.

I only gave it a 2 rating because of Grant's girlfriend - she actually made sense in her role as a worried, confused, and SMART (rare in Lifetime fodder) character.

Grade D / 2 out of 10.

A Roommate to Die For (2023)

Why didn't she CHANGE THE LOCKS??

A Roommate to Die For

Her first of many mistakes was even thinking about letting a stranger of the opposite sex move into her house - and then not even do a halfway thorough background check. For a supposedly intelligent realtor or real estate lawyer - whatever she was - that was careless and dumb. Taking a strange guy into your house, where you SLEEP, based on the fact he was charming during the initial interview. But the dumbest thing of all was not changing the locks when he left the night of the party. Oh and also install an alarm system while you're at it since it didn't seem like there was one in the house.

I could only shake my head and roll my eyes when she was driving back from the police station with Jeremy the next day, when he asked her if Vince would come back to the house and she said she didn't know and was scared. There would have been no way he could get back in the house if she would have changed the locks. He got the room under false pretenses and committed fraud by giving a false name on the lease, so that should have broken it for that reason alone, along with not paying half the bills like he had agreed to in writing. So she was within her rights to change the locks to keep him out.

The other blatantly stupid thing she did was confronting him with facts - including his real name and the assault he had committed in high school - when she was alone with him, without even so much as pepper spray hidden behind her back. At that point she knew he was potentially dangerous, yet she risked her life by "poking the bear" with nothing to defend herself with if he became violent.

And the worn out trope of the villain putting cameras all over the victim's house is in 8 out of 10 LMN movies and is so tiresome by now. And in this movie, there was really no point in it. I must admit it was clever for the villain to accuse the victim of putting a camera in his room, to keep suspicion off of him if the other cameras were found later on.

Disappointing to see the usual amount of Lifetime plotholes throughout, and factual mistakes such as Faith being given a restraining order just because she knows Jeremy, who supposedly assaulted Vince (but hadn't, of course). Courts do not issue restraining orders to people who know the perpetrator who committed the assault - only the perpetrator.

And I had to roll my eyes again near the end when Faith did what all victims in Lifetime movies do: managed to get the best of the villain and knock him down, but left the weapon lying within his reach instead of grabbing it to keep it away from him. She only went back and picked it up when Jeremy told her to, to get him untied.

Grade C / 4 out of 10.

My Killer Reunion (2023)

Dumb and convoluted

My Killer Reunion

I won't waste time and effort describing this movie and everything that was bad and wrong about it - the IQ level of each new LMN movie seems to go down another notch or two with numerous plotholes (James the doctor was the ONLY good thing in this one), but the main plot summary at the top of the imdb page is completely incorrect: Morgan wasn't obsessed with James, trying to take him away from Claire (yet ANOTHER Claire of the many Lifetime lead characters named Claire...apparently Lifetime has no idea there are thousands of female names to use other than Claire, Hannah, Allison, Sarah, Morgan, Kate, etc.). Morgan and James had nothing to do with each other throughout the movie. Hopefully someone with the ability to correct it will do so eventually.

Rear View Mirror (2023)

Lead actress resembles Mary Tyler Moore

"Rear View Mirror"/"Hiding From My Husband"

Waste of time with rehashed plotlines, dialogue, and two unsurprising twists at the end - (I suspected Jessica's sister all along as being nefarious and untrustworthy) - and the usual absurd LMN plotholes.

BUT I only created this review to state how continually struck I was by Kayla Fields' strong resemblance to TV actress legend Mary Tyler Moore. I'm not saying she's her twin, but she could believably play the daughter MTM never had. Her facial features - especially eyes and mouth - are so similar to MTM's that Fields could play MTM herself in a bio flick, which I'd love to see.

Grade D / 2 out of 10.

Deadly Debutantes: A Night to Die For (2021)

Too awful for words

"Deadly Debutantes"

.......or whatever the title is.......?

Like my review title states, the thing is beyond awful. Ridiculous petty plot, bad acting, and stupid, incomprehensible reason for psycho's vendetta.

Seems to have been written and produced by elementary school children - no higher than fourth grade.

And contrary to the first review here, neither of the two main girls (Anna and Sophia) won the contest. It was implied throughout that one of them was the villain who was sabotaging the other to prevent them from winning, but that was only a contrived ploy/smokescreen to divert from the actual villain.

Not worth the time wasted to watch it. You've been warned...

Grade F / 1 out of 10.

Here Kills the Bride (2022)

Bad and lame

"Here Kills the Bride"

Stupid title for a stupid movie, because the bride wasn't killed - she went after everyone who ticked her off to kill THEM. The movie opens on the psycho villain spying on her fiance at his bachelor party. When it was over, she killed him because there was a stripper at the party, who performed mainly for him since he was the groom. A few months later, she has a new fiance and goes with him to meet his parents and sister because they will be getting married in a week. (The reviewer here who stated he met her at a strip club was wrong: according to his story told to his parents and sister that first day, they met when she performed CPR on his friend who had collapsed on the way to lunch.)

Jasmine, the sister, is shocked that they're getting married so soon since they've only known each other a few months. She overhears another woman in the restroom with Grace (the psycho bride-to-be) talking to her about the strip club they used to work in together, and that sets Jasmine off into secretly investigating Grace. Meanwhile, Grace seems to be everywhere that anyone is talking about her, overhearing what they say, and then coming after them soon afterward to kill them. She also knew Jasmine looked in her purse to find her driver's license even though she was in another room trying on her wedding dress. Of course, after Jasmine gathers info about her from various sources and tells it all to her brother to warn him, he dismisses it by saying he already knew it and tells her to leave.

Will Grace be shown to be the psycho criminal she is by the end and will he acknowledge that his sister was right all along? Unfortunately, you'll have to watch the thing to find out - try not to suffer too much throughout, as I did.

Grace somehow knowing that Jasmine looked in her purse in another room is just one of the several contrived plot holes in this movie, that - along with the bad script, bad acting, stilted dialogue, and bad direction - earns it a zero rating. I only gave it a one because that's the lowest possible rating here on imdb.

Grade F / 1 out of 10.

Vacation Home Nightmare (2023)

Movie sucks but Justin Berti is a good villain

Vacation Home Nightmare

Familiar LMN theme: group of female friends rent a vacation house at the beach to lay in the sun and party. In this case, it was only ten miles from the lead character's house - so not far away, and her house was almost as nice as the rental, with pool and floor-to-ceiling windows, etc., as was her friend Alesha's house. It never said what she/Danielle and Alesha did for a living, if anything at all, but as usual with 99 out of 100 Lifetime flicks, young single women (and single mothers) live in expensive luxurious resort-style houses.

The plot is dumb: a guy is still upset over his marriage ending and the way his wife treated him, so he becomes a murderous psychopath based on his conviction that all women who get divorced due to their husbands cheating on them should be murdered as punishment - along with anyone else in their lives. At the end when he was about to murder Danielle, he was nice enough to take time out in his murderous rampage to explain to her the reason why: because she had the nerve to come to a vacation rental to have fun after she dumped her husband whom she had cheated on. Just as I was thinking, "Why would he care what she did? (and he was wrong about her being the one who had committed adultery) Is he related to her ex-husband or something?", she asked him the same question: "Why do you care?"

Like another reviewer said, there were plot holes that made the movie hard to follow. For example, it wasn't clear what Anton poured bleach on in the plastic bag that Danielle plucked out of the trash bin he put it in. Then she stupidly left it on her kitchen counter - a trash bag with evidence in it that was filled with bleach. Not smart to leave it anywhere in the house - much less on the kitchen counter.

Also, it never showed her finding out about Jack's murder. So up to the very end, when she said she wanted to put it all behind her and move on (which was a lot of death and craziness to sweep aside like mere dust under the carpet), she might have STILL been under the wrong impression that he stood her up and went away.

Justin Berti seems to be the new regular LMN male lead, mainly as the villain, since this makes the third or fourth one I've seen in which he's the main bad guy. He's certainly good at it and is the only reason I rated VHN above zero, even though his motive in this one is absurd.

Grade F / 2 out of 10.

Road Trip Hostage (2023)

Meh.....not good but not totally bad

Road Trip Hostage

I'm the second reviewer here, and the only reason I'm doing a review is to counteract the first overly gushing review by 'lmtearne', who's obviously the lead actress's BFF or sister. RTH certainly doesn't deserve such a glowing review. My main complaint with the movie is the lead girl's flat emotionless acting - nowhere near the glowing praise she was given in the first review. And her "dancing" was more like slow lackadaisical yoga-gymnastics than actual dancing, and totally out of rhythm with the accompanying music. No dancing talent shown whatsoever for someone with such a strong ambition for it.

The story was good and believable, except the part where the hotel clerk not only stood in the middle of the parking lot as an easy target for the criminal to run her over with the stolen car, but she actually turned around with her back to him while making the 911 call ABOUT HIM BECAUSE SHE SUSPECTED HE WAS A CRIMINAL. She seemed smart in the first part of her scene, guessing that he was shady and the girl was in trouble, then she does an utterly stupid thing like that. She was lucky that she was only knocked off her feet and not killed.

I have to note one thing that I realized: the lead actor bore a strong resemblance to a young Malcolm McDowell. And he did a much better job of believable acting than the girl. I realize she couldn't be throwing tantrums and screaming and crying the entire time she was being held hostage, but she showed little to no emotion at all.

I noticed a glaring goof: when Hilary texted Emma just before she was kidnapped, the time on Emma's phone was 2:01 but the time of her mom's text was three mins later, at 2:04. In the next scene, the time on Hilary's phone was 11:38. Very sloppy, noticeable mistake, Lifetime crew!

Like my title says: not good but not totally bad either.

Grade D - 4 out of 10.

If I Can't Have You (2023)

Draggy and flat

If I Can't Have You

First off, comparing "Play Misty For Me" to this thing - as another reviewer did- is like comparing gold to pot metal.

I only gave it 2 stars because of two of my favorite longtime Lifetimers being in it, albeit with small roles: Eric Roberts and Tracy Nelson (although I loved ER long before he became a frequent Lifetime actor). Otherwise it would be a zero rating.

It struck me all through it that the lead actress - Bailey Kai - strongly resembles Darryl Hannah.

Brief review:

Lead actress slept throughout - very flat, emotionless acting. Every time she and her friend would go out for coffee, I hoped it would finally wake her up. Very easy to figure out who the stalker is, from about fifteen minutes into the movie. The hour and thirty-five minutes went by soooo slooow with very little actually happening, leading up to a weak anti-climactic ending. Plus, the two neighbors - Robert and Benjamin Sklar - were confusing as to who was who and who lived where. Especially near the end when Robert walked right by her to go to his car, as if she was in his driveway....?

So flat, draggy, and boring that if it hadn't been for Eric and Tracy, I wouldn't have made it past the first forty mins or so. Skip it and save yourself the time.

Grade F / 2 out of 10.

Secret Diary of A Cheerleader (2023)

ZERO rating

My Diary of Lies / Secret Diary of a Cheerleader

Just horrid. Everything in this movie is horrid: horrid acting, writing, directing, casting, dialogue, organization, plot (and lack thereof)......just HORRID.

So the Chem teacher was only selling the cheerleaders drugs but not sleeping with them (?) and Jake - the mystery villain revealed at the end when he suddenly turned psycho - apparently killed him with a bottle to the head? We don't know if the teacher lived because nothing was said about it after the scene in which it happened.

We also don't know Jake's motives for killing the cheerleaders. What was he doing that was wrong/illegal that the girls threatened to blackmail him about? The audience was led to believe the killer was the Chem teacher, but the twist at the end was that it was Jake.

And then he tried to kill the lead actress (the high school girl who looked around 12 or 13 years old) for some reason - whom he was supposedly interested in - but, OF COURSE, her mom (the horrid "actress" Laurie Fortier) got there in the split second nick of time to save her. Then he tried to kill HER. Then her daughter saved HER, all while the daughter's friend was flailing around in the midst of it.

WHAT a convoluted idiotic MESS.

I really wish I'd known that Lifetime accepted and paid good money for grade school-mentality scripts, because I would have certainly taken advantage of that and been a millionaire by now - churning out crap like this mess of a movie.

Grade F - 0/1 out of 10 (would be zero if possible)

Psycho Paramedic (2023)

Not bad for a Lifetime psycho/stalker movie

Paramedic Who Stalked Me/Psycho Paramedic

For the umpteenth LMN psycho/stalker flick, it was pretty good. I think they've done all professions/occupations at this point. In fact, I thought it would probably be a carbon copy of the Eric Roberts 'Stalked By My Doctor' one, since they're both in the medical field, but it stood out on its own.

Of course it contained the usual tropes of the victim exploring the psycho's background to find his motivation for stalking her, the attempted murder of the victim's romantic partner, hypodermic needles, the killing of anyone who catches on to the psycho's lies, and the worst, most over the top one of all: psycho breaking into victim's house to lay on her bed, etc., and the victim getting into psycho's house to find evidence.

My only real complaints: the noticeable mis-matching of not only the psycho and his object of obsession, but of the mother and daughter too. They didn't look like they were related at all - much less mother and daughter. But even worse were the paramedic and the high school girl he was obsessed with. I cannot understand why they would use an actress that's two feet shorter than the antagonist and looks around fourteen/fifteen at the oldest. It adds to the lack of credibility. I had to laugh when she put her arms around him in an attempt to hug him out of gratefulness early in the movie - her shoulders were barely above his waist! Surely the producers could've found an actress who was only six inches or so shorter than him?

I must admit I had the intended reaction that was manipulated from the audience at the very end, when his laughter turned to crying - I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

Grade C / 6 out of 10.

You Can't Escape Me (2023)

Actually not bad, surprisingly

"You Can't Escape Me"

One of the very few LMN movies I've rated above 3 - other than the true crime ones which are usually very good.

Very few complaints with this as for the most part, it was well done. In a nutshell: unknown artist marries guy she's only known 6 months, and she soon finds out he's insanely possessive, jealous, and abusive. He ruins her one chance at her first gallery showing of her paintings due to his crazed jealousy over the gallery owner. So she ends up at an old friend's place in another state and starts a new life with a fake name, including self defense training in case he finds her and forces her to go back to LA with him against her will..

Main complaint: it might sound petty, but couldn't they have found an actor who was at least as tall as she was and not so thin and young-looking to play her new boyfriend? He was horribly miscast. An environmental lawyer? He looked more like a senior in high school. They didn't look right together at all.

Alex Trumble, who played the husband, is becoming one of the Lifetime regulars. I've seen him in a few other LMNs, playing both the villain and the sweet normal guy. He does well at both and he's actually good-looking too, unlike so many other Lifetime male leads.

Not bad, for a run of the mill psycho bad guy vs. Good girl LMN flick. This particular good girl refuses to be the psycho's victim by preparing for their eventual showdown.

Grade B- / 6 out of 10.

Secret Lives of Housewives (2022)

Title should be "The Making of a Serial Killer"

"Secret Lives of Housewives" doesn't fit the movie hardly at all, since there were only two characters who were messing around with the single guy before he was murdered, and neither of them were leads. The lead character stopped just before succumbing to an affair, so the "secret lives" part didn't really apply to her.

"The Making of a Serial Killer" would be the perfect title since that's what the ending consisted of: the parents covered up the murder and the killer by getting rid of the evidence instead of doing the right thing, which would've been to take the kid to the police and tell the truth, and then to a good therapist. And not surprisingly, the last scene showed him standing over his next victim (?) with a butcher knife.

Speaking of titles, Jessica Morris seems to be going for the title of "Actress Who's Been in More Lifetime Movies Than Any Other Actress". At least in this one - (what, her twentieth LMN part?) - she attempts to act, unlike the others she's been in.

It wasn't until Peter went to leave with the wrench that it finally hit me that the son was the murderer. But how long ago had he found it before finally attempting to get rid of it? Of course his wife had to wake up and catch him as he was leaving, which led to the climax...

Also, the son was too smart to have been so careless with his victim's cell phone as to forget it was in his dirty laundry. But at least it gave the audience the rare chance to see Morris' character actually do something she never does in Lifetime movies: housework.

Grade D / 3 out of 10.

Secrets in the Building (2022)

One of the worst LMN movies ever due to bad writing with major plot holes

"Secrets in the Building" / "Killer Condo"

I'm seriously beginning to believe some of these bad Lifetime "movies" were dreamed up and written by either grade school children or young adults who never made it past fourth grade. The plethora of plot holes were ridiculous with this one:

1) 'Josh'/Dan would have NO WAY of knowing when Michelle and Norah would eat the drugged cake he brought them right after Norah was hit by the car, yet he and Channing showed up shortly after they passed out from eating the cake which was at least a week after he gave it to them, since Norah was all healed up from the injuries from the car hitting her.

2) The screaming fight between Helene and Channing which seemed to be about someone Channing was in love with and insisted on staying with, was never explained or part of the plot. Channing was never shown to have a boyfriend or a man she was fighting to keep over her mother's objections.

3) What was with the same white Tacoma truck being used by both Michelle when she moved in at the beginning and Helene when she moved out at the end? Neither one of them owned a truck at all, much less the same exact color and model.

4) The entire premise of 'Josh'/Dan openly coming and going while visiting Michelle at random times of day and night was the biggest plot hole of all, since his wife Helene and daughter Channing lived in the same building. He couldn't possibly know when they might be visiting Michelle's place or walking around inside or outside the building, in the parking lot, etc.

5) Helene assured Michelle that her ex-husband Dan was long gone and wasn't stalking her anymore - since she had lived in the same apartment that Michelle moved into, yet how could she be sure of that? She couldn't possibly know if he had given up stalking her and that he was long gone.

6) It's unlikely that Helene wouldn't know that the real Josh was on vacation in Israel since he was the building contractor there and he had been on vacation for over a month when Michelle first told her about Josh being her new boyfriend and she had just met him there in the building.

7) Apparently it was 'Josh'/Dan that keyed Michelle's car, but he took a big chance at not being caught when he did it, since it was in the lighted parking lot of the huge condo building where anyone could have either seen him out their window or driving down the street, etc.

8) Why did 'Josh'/Dan even bother to strike up the romantic relationship with Michelle and take her out on dates and visit her at the apartment as a friend/lover? His end goal was to get her and her daughter out of the apartment, so why have the romance with her in the first place? It was unnecessary contrived baggage to the already-weak plotline - obviously just for the shock value when it was revealed he was the villain. The child-minded writers of this crap apparently thinks the audience of mostly adult women are just as dumb and vapid as they are.

9) And last but not least - there is NO WAY that Michelle would have been able to make it down all those flights of stairs after being knocked out by the hammer blow to her head, just in the nick of time to save her daughter; JUST as the psycho was about to kill her with a fatal blow to her face/head. But at least she didn't just hit him once and then throw down her weapon (golf club) next to him for him to get up and use against her and her daughter, which shocked me to no end since that's the usual thing for victims to do in LMN movies.

The Lawrence character was over the top, as was the Channing character, but both were wrapped up in a nice neat bow when she suddenly turned human toward the end and will now gladly accept therapy, and Lawrence being civil and helpful about changing the door lock.

Trying to think of something positive to say about this....thing....before ending my review. If I had to conjure up something, I guess it would be the relaxed, loving relationship of Michelle and Norah, subtly shown in their good-natured, gentle ribbing of each other, which is the best kind of dynamic to have with a parent at Norah's age.

However, there's so much bad about it that it barely leaves any room for anything good. I would hope that the players/"actors" did it whilst mentally holding their noses, just for the paycheck - because it would be worrisome if they actually believed it was a good script.

P. S. I must comment on one part of the only other review here (so far anyway), by 'lavatch': the statement that no one liked Helene and Channing was only half-correct. Helene was not as unlikeable or hateful as her daughter Channing. She was very friendly and welcoming to Michelle when she moved in and with the chicken soup when Norah was sick with the migraine. She was just being protective of her daughter during the mix-up with Michelle's false accusation of the break-in, and when Channing lied to her about Michelle and Norah attacking her.

Grade F / 1 out of 10.

Driven to Murder (2022)

It lost all credibility in the huge plot hole near the beginning

"Driven" / "Driven to Murder"

Sociopathic psycho kills his rideshare driver for no reason, which launches a murderous overnight crime spree centered around the female lead/protagonist, for seemingly no reason. Motive never even hinted at, much less given, as to why he was "driven to murder" (or maybe the title refers to the murder Sarah committed at the end).

Major plot hole near the beginning was so contrived and obvious, because otherwise the movie would have ended there and only lasted 30-40 minutes. It happened during the car wash scene, when the killer was taking his sweet time wiping every inch of the front end of the stolen car and the victim was in the restroom calling her friend Matt. Not only did she change her mind about him picking her up there after initially asking him to, but she inexplicably talked him out of calling the police when he offered to! She was perfectly safe in the restroom until the police would have arrived there to take control of the very strange, unsettling situation, but she stupidly told Matt NOT TO CALL THEM and didn't call them herself.

So that enabled the next hour of mayhem in which she was almost killed several times, along with her friends and other innocent people being killed - none of which would have happened if she had explained the unsettling events to Matt while she was safe in the restroom with her phone and either urged him to call the police or called them herself.

Adam Blake's excellent performance (I had never heard of him until now) was the only reason I gave it more than one star.

Grade D / 3 out of 10.

Fatal Fandom (2022)

Ridiculous unrealistic ending

Fatal Fandom

Pop star hires security guard as her personal 24/7 bodyguard, whom she allows to live in her house, unaware that he's a psycho with a vengeful murderous agenda.

At least this time, the huge palatial mansion was believable since she was a wealthy celebrity - unlike the many Lifetime movies where the huge resort-like mansions are the homes of common folk with healthcare jobs and single moms struggling to get by, behind on bills (a frequent complaint of mine in my reviews here).

I knew the attack by the guy with the gun at the beginning was set-up by the psycho security guard to get Eden to like and remember him and then eventually hire him as her bodyguard, which means I've watched way too many LMN flicks since it's an oft-used plot device by the psycho stalker to endear the victim to him.

A huge plot hole: Jackson was more than willing to get hot and heavy with Eden when they finally kissed on her patio, yet his motive for maneuvering himself into her life and her house was because he hated her for what he perceived as her role in his sister's suicide. If he hated her so much, how could he be so passionate about making love to her?

Finally - the insanely dumb ending: I had to rewind it to make sure I heard Eden and Christian correctly.

Christian: "I liked your remix."

Eden: "I did too."

This, right after they've both just been through the harrowing experience of a psycho murderer terrorizing them and killing Eden's best friend right in front of her - not to mention the bad guy still tied up and gagged in the storage room. Do they immediately rush to a phone to call the police as soon as they're able to? NO, of course not - they cuddle and stare up at the sky while blood pours down the back of Christian's head where Jackson had clocked him in his murderous rampage. And as anyone who's watched Lifetime movies knows - the villain ALWAYS gets back up after being shot/stabbed/knocked out/etc. And goes after the protag again and again like a mindless robot. Yet neither Christian nor Eden even look back at Jackson even once to make sure he's down for good. Sometimes I wonder about the intelligence and maturity level of the writers of these LMN flicks.... I really do.

Grade D / 2 out of 10.

Hall Pass Nightmare (2022)

Lol a "bad boy rock star" who only plays acoustic guitar and sings ballads??

Hall Pass Nightmare

My review title is the main laughable, nonsensical issue of this latest of many over-the-top LMN fictional flicks with its usual premise of a violent psycho-stalker LBG (Lifetime Bad Guy) who's hyper-focused on LGG (Lifetime Good Girl) for unknown reasons - this time in the form of a famous singer who used to be in a rock band and has gone solo under the stage name 'Dante'.

Other laughable issues include:

• the object of LBG's obsession being unattractive and boring - as if this hot "bad boy" didn't already have a plethora of groupies drooling over him from which he could pick and choose.....but no, of course he just had to set his sights on a mediocre, stringy-haired, uptight married woman with a boring job in healthcare administration and no tattoos (I remember watching her - Andrea Bowen - as Julie, the daughter of one of the Desperate Housewives, years ago)

• her plan to stop his stalking is to stupidly entice him to her BFF's house where she and her two girlfriends think they'll bring him down with a taser and baseball bat

• no help from the police whatsoever

• LGG's husband overacted to the point that he came across as a dorky goof (he also reminded me of a young Harrison Ford in the looks dept.)

Brief summary: LGG and two friends go to business convention where she meets her high school celeb crush in the bar and turns down his invite to his room but ends up making out with him in the hotel hallway. After returning home, he openly stalks her with surprise visits and gifts and texts, that she repeatedly rebuffs, but he can't/won't take 'no' for an answer and so predictably turns violent and dangerous.

Main complaint is the ambiguous ending: it only showed him lying still after falling down the short flight of stairs, so the viewer is left to wonder if he died or was arrested?

Grade D - 2 out of 10.

Revenge for My Mother (2022)

Acting not bad but movie too contrived overall

Revenge for My Mother

Title should be "Revenge for My Parents" since the female lead/LGG (Lifetime Good Girl) was indirectly responsible for the LBG's (Lifetime Bad Girl) father's death also, when the shock of seeing his wife's killer online caused the heart attack that led to the stent surgery that he did not survive.

Anyway, the entire movie is based on a huge contrivance that's not likely to happen in real life: LBG getting out of jail and finding a job listing for the business owned by the exact same woman who accidentally killed her mother twenty years ago.

Not to mention how it was completely glossed over with no mention of how she was instantly hired with not even a background check done by LGG, especially because of LBG's valid concern that it wouldn't be easy finding a job right after getting out of jail.

So thanks to those two glaring plotholes, we have yet another psycho-vengeance-scheme focused on the undeserving sane, normal, decent victim - with a baby, no less. In other words, more of same-old same-old re: over-the-top LMN fictional flicks. But the acting all around wasn't bad and it gets an extra point for the stiletto high heels bit because it was clever and original, unlike the other usual rehashed tropes of framing the husband/boyfriend and ruining the career/business of the unsuspecting victim, etc.

I also liked the log wrapped in the blanket as a concealed weapon until I realized that that, too, was a contrivance that wouldn't happen in real life since the baby would most likely be bawling at the top of her lungs after her blanket was taken off her and her mom left her alone in the stroller. Actually, the baby rarely ever cried throughout the movie, unless it was for convenience to the plot, like when the crying distracted the villain from her forced-suicide murder of the victim, giving the vic the upper hand which, of course, saved her life.

So because of the few yet fairly major plotholes/contrivances - no matter the well-done direction and acting - it only rates as fair..

Grade C - 4 out of 10.

Girl in Room 13 (2022)

Movie is ONE BIG FAT PLOTHOLE

"Girl in Room 13"

Only giving this thing a 3 out of 10 due to Ann Heche's brilliant performance, and it includes nods to both the girl who played her daughter and her kidnapper for their believable portrayals.

I wanted to like this movie for two reasons: Ann Heche and Elisabeth Rohm as director. Ann did not disappoint. But how could both of them be involved with a movie that's one big huge plothole - with several ingrained, just as annoying mini-plotholes??

BRIEF SUMMARY: Ann (as Janie) plays a mom who's in her second marriage, to Burt, with his daughter Toni as her step-daughter, and her own two kids - Rex and Grace. Grace, an expert swimmer/diver, is over 18 and just got out of rehab for her opioid addiction. She works at her brother Rex's restaurant and lives in a basement room there temporarily. Another waitress/barmaid there - 'Red' - sets her up to be kidnapped by Grace's ex Richie, who's one of the worst slimebags ever to exist in any LMN movie to date. Richie's sole motive is to sell her into human sex trafficking to make thousands of dollars off of her, and he puts her in a cheap motel room to break her spirit to turn her into a drugged, mindless "piece of meat", as he calls her. Since the police can't do much and have no leads, it's up to Burt and Janie to do the necessary investigating and legwork to find her before it's too late.

NEWS FLASH: There wouldn't be a movie at all if not for the main blatant contrivance - much less the other smaller ones associated with it.

MAJOR/MAIN PLOTHOLE: When Grace enters the restaurant on her day off, Red approaches her with the most transparent, ridiculous request that sets the rest of the plot in motion - she asks her if she'll meet Richie (who's already primed/groomed her with a beautiful gift and a short video call where he made sure his young son was available to endear Grace to the both of them) and give him an envelope supposedly full of money so he can pay the hospital to care for his son who is suddenly ill/injured. And because they had to film another hour or so of this thing, Grace - who was already presented as an intelligent stable young woman who's no longer an addict and had already pronounced Richie as "trouble" to Red - RIDICULOUSLY AGREES TO DO IT, apparently because they used Richie's son to pull on her heartstrings to make it a request she couldn't refuse.

Grace did ask Red why she couldn't meet him and her excuse was because she had to work her shift (although she never showed back up to either her job or apartment after that day when Grace was kidnapped).

In the real world without this childishly contrived drivel, Grace would have simply asked: "Why can't Richie come HERE to the restaurant to get it from you?" If he has a car to drive to meet Grace elsewhere to get the envelope, he can drive to the restaurant to get it from Red. Grace knew he was "trouble" and knew better than to see him again, yet she falls for the obvious lie that he needs the money to pay the hospital to take care of his son. Anyone would automatically know that hospitals don't need to be paid cash upfront before they'll tend to a sick/injured child. Grace would know that since she was not stupid. She should have been able to see right through Red's story. That's where it lost me. I sat through the rest of it only to witness one of the last-ever brilliant works of Ann Heche.

THE LESSER-BUT-JUST-AS-IRRITATING PLOTHOLES:

1) Neither Burt nor Janie thought to look up her credit card purchases during her disappearance?? Especially after they spoke to one of them who said the card was closed due to FRAUDULENT RETURNS FOR CASH?? And Burt just said, "Okay that's all I need", and hung up, and didn't immediately pull up the account online to see where the fraud took place?? It wasn't until way later, near the end, that it finally dawned on Janie to do it.

2) There is NO WAY that any legitimate retail establishment would continually do credit card returns for cash, and keep getting away with it, to the point that when Janie frantically asked the cashier about her daughter being there, the cashier said, "The people that do those kind of returns usually come from the Garden State Parkway Motel down the street."

WHAT??!? So the store cashiers are knowingly and continually doing these fraudulent credit card transactions and even know where the low-lifes are staying, but no law enforcement has been involved to date??!?

3) When Grace got annoyed at her mother for hesitating to give her permission to use Toni's car to meet Richie to give him the money: it wasn't her mother's place to let her use her step-sister's car. But Janie only briefly mentioned that it was Toni's car before finally relenting and giving her permission to use it. Why wasn't Toni herself there to give her permission to use it if her car was there? Why was Grace asking Janie for permission to use it?

These and a few other smaller plotholes are major insults to viewers' intelligence. The writers and director, et al, should know better. It was a very difficult movie to get through for several reasons:

1) Ann Heche's recent tragic, senseless death

2) the subject matter and the brutal treatment of Grace by Richie and others

3) the ineptness and nonchalance of the producer and director in putting together a movie with such blatant plot holes/contrivances The real travesty is that this kind of incompetence in portraying the real global problem of human sex trafficking diminishes the horrific tragedy of the issue and almost makes a mockery of it when it's presented in this juvenile level of production.

Grade D / 3 out of 10 (only for Ann herself and performances of Max and Larissa)

Love Triangle Nightmare (2022)

Absolutely no chemistry with the two leads

Love Triangle Nightmare

I can't understand why Lifetime keeps putting two totally unlikely people together in romantic relationships as the male and female leads in their movies. This big, tall guy and tiny unattractive woman (several times I was truly afraid her big eyeballs were going to fall out of their sockets the way she kept rolling them around) who was at least a foot shorter than him had zero chemistry and therefore were impossible to take seriously which ruined the entire movie......not that it was anything good to be able to ruin. It was bad from the beginning and totally uninteresting and over the top with the plot holes and contrivances. I guess LMN thought they needed a new and different sick obsession for their resident psycho character - in this case, a dead mother fixation. How utterly boring!

And of course, he had to kill both her good friend and bad friend and frame her husband for the good friend murder - all just to free her up to be his and only his, and because the two friends knew too much. As if she's the only woman in the world and he has no chance to simply find someone else without all the baggage. No - it just had to be her and her only, even though she basically thought of him as just a friend and wasn't sure she wanted the divorce from her husband.....not to mention how mismatched they were as a couple.

The husband was almost as bad of a match to the main character as the psycho villain was. So no chemistry with them either. This is becoming the norm - no chemistry between the lead characters - in the last five or six LMN movies that I've fought to sit through.

The writer is Andrea Canning - the Dateline reporter - who seems to be enjoying a dual career since this isn't her only Lifetime movie she's written. So she's raking in the money while foisting this convoluted juvenile crap on us unsuspecting viewers.

Grade F - 1 out of 10.

Secrets Exposed (2022)

Insanely bad......just really BAD

"Secrets Exposed"

Stupid title - stupid movie. Nothing redeemable or remarkable other than it being remarkably bad in every way. I try to give these things a chance, but other than the exceptionally well done true crime movies that Lifetime gifts us with now and then, their fictional movies are nothing other than the same elementary school plots and stories over and over again with different so-called 'actors'. And usually the same character names used repeatedly (Allison, Sarah, Hannah, Zoe, Chloe, Kate, David, Michael, Sam, etc.)

Dumbest parts:

• The professor barely looked old enough to be a college student, yet the mom, who had to be at least early 40s, ended up in his arms after finding her daughter's tank top on fire - huh?? - and had to turn down his advances. They looked like mother and son.

• She finds the dead girl, then a bag is put over her head from behind, and it goes to commercial. Next scene is her telling the cop that whoever did it must've done it to scare her into not talking....?? So they put the thing over her head and then take it off and run away?? My neighbor's dog could write a better script than this crap.

• The mom is a lawyer yet spends the night at the (stranger) professor's place for convenience since she lives so far away, while they work to find her daughter. She couldn't afford a hotel room for a night or two??

• Last but not least: no one who wants to be anonymous/unidentifiable would use the name of their well-known company (PVTech) in the cam girl chats, which should go without saying, yet the supposedly smart lawyer mom instantly believed it was actually Paul Vargas, the owner of the company. And how dense is the professor for using such a blatantly obvious ruse to implicate Vargas?? Not to mention a glaring goof/plothole: the lawyer mom pointed out the large amounts PVTECH was paying the cam girls - such as $6000 - which Paul Vargas could easily afford. But when it came out in the end that it was the young professor trying to frame him, it wasn't explained where HE would get that kind of money.

Did NOT enjoy, not even a little bit, as I do with most other LMN over-the-top guilty pleasures. This one had nothing going for it.

Grade F - 1 out of 10.

The Bad Seed Returns (2022)

Biggest plothole and best line

'The Bad Seed Returns'

Firstly, nothing will ever come close to the 1956 original. It was pure perfection in every way, and would've been only half as good in color. The b&w cinematography made it that much more suspenseful, depressing, and compelling.

This movie's prequel with Rob Lowe was ruined from the beginning, mainly because so much was changed from the original - even down to the main characters' names - and he was just too old to be believable as her father. He was the right age to play her grandfather, even with the overdone plastic surgery. But not her dad. And his sister - the girl's aunt - looked like she came from a different family entirely with her blonde hair and big eyes. So, too much was too off throughout to be enjoyable, along with the gaping plot holes that flat-out ruined it - mainly the wasp nest being perfectly removed from the shed and perfectly placed in the car without tearing it by a little girl - all by herself, without being stung 500 times... Right...

As for this sequel, it was just more of the same except this time they actually tried to get the aunt character to look more like her brother instead of from a totally unrelated family. But couldn't they have found a baby with dark hair to match his parents? The red-haired baby in this film was as miscast as Rob Lowe in the first one.

The biggest plothole: Kat was too smart and too wise onto Emma to have let herself be completely conned into not only going to her house (in the pouring rain, to boot) but then to be dumb and off-guard enough to drink anything that Emma would give her. Of course there would've been no blow-up slam-dash twisty ending if Kat had remained her usual smart, watchful self and told Emma on the phone that whatever she had to tell her, she could just simply tell her over the phone, to keep a safe distance from the girl whom she KNOWS is an evil conniving killer. But no, she goes there in torrential rain and takes the hot chocolate from Emma and drinks it without a second thought. She puts herself totally at the mercy of this wicked girl she had been onto from the get-go, from way back in elementary school. That was the worst movie-ruiner for me.

As for best line/dialogue: after Kat told Emma "You won't get away with it..", Emma puts on her brief scared, screaming act for 911, then hangs up and smiles at the drugged Kat and says, "That was me getting away with it".

Mckenna Grace should move on to other roles as she gets older and never do another sequel to these very poor remakes of the original outstanding film. She has talent and looks and plenty of time ahead to enjoy a prolific acting career.

Grade D - 3 out of 10.