Caught (Review)

January 4, 2016ByTars Tarkas

Caught

2015
Written by Marcy Holland
Directed by Maggie Kiley

Two characters from True Blood kidnap a girl from the Jem movie as a prank, but soon one dumb thing snowballs into a bunch of bad choices and horrible consequences spiraling all over the place. It all adds up to a great little Lifetime flick that deserves a bigger audience. Really, films like this are one of the reasons why I subject myself to the constant stream of Lifetime movies, there is always nuggets of gold hidden in the mountains of madness.

Allie (Stefanie Scott) is a track star, but things aren’t going her way. She’ failing history, so she’s off the team. She’s a busy waitress who gets tips that just say “HOPELESS”. Her mom is also broke and taking up extra waitressing shifts as well. Allie has a boyfriend, who is much older than her and she rarely gets to seem him. Her mother disapproves because the guy is so old. But the end of a bad day becomes worse when she is kidnapped!

Sisters Sabrina (Anna Camp) and Paige (Amelia Rose Blaire) are the kidnappers, who tie her up, blindfold her, threaten her, and lock her in an attic. The pair are ecstatic and full of giggles once away from her. Sabrina is the more danger seeking, Paige a bit more reserved and level-headed, talking Sabrina down when she tries to get creative on how to torture Allie a bit more before letting her go. Sabrina is miffed that Allie is sleeping with her husband, and this is to warn her off. Suddenly said husband Justin (Sam Page) comes home. He was supposed to be away on a business trip, so uh-oh!

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Online Abduction (Review)

December 28, 2015ByTars Tarkas

Online Abduction

aka Cyber Case

2015
Written by Caron Tschampion
Directed by Steven R. Monroe

Just when you thought it was safe to go online, Lifetime is back again for the umpteenth time to remind you that THE INTERNET WILL KILL YOU!!!! Or at least abduct your small children, as the unfortunate Fletcher family experiences thanks to their not removing their location tracking features on the social media they continuously update like a Skinner rat pushing buttons for food. Online Abduction starts out looking like teenage Isabel Fletcher is going to be the one who gets abducted, but it turns out to be her 3 year old half-brother, Tommy. Things go all Gone Girl with a serious investigation that begins to escalate as it looks less like Tommy just wandered off and more like he was snatched. But Isabel has an idea, to use the power of lax privacy settings on social media as a weapon instead of a vulnerability, and track down the abductors. Will Tommy be saved?

Online Abduction features one of my favorite thing of Lifetime movies, fake social media sites! We got fake Instagram called InstaQuik, and a warped version of Facebook called FaceChatter. Also something called Twitter. Sadly, none of the fake Twitter accounts used that I checked are actual Twitter accounts.

Isabel Fletcher (Brooke Butler) spends all her time online, despite sarcastic comments from her real estate agent mom, Jackie (Natalia Livingston), who also spends a lot of time online. Jackie recently had a son with her new husband, Matt (David Chokachi), who Isabel seems to resent now that he has his own kid to raise (despite her taking his name?) Isabel ditches them to go out and party and get drunk and meet boys like every 16 year old, bonding with skater kid Jeremy (Matthew Ziff).

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Girl Missing (Review)

December 24, 2015ByTars Tarkas

Girl Missing

aka Forgotten

2015
Written by Philip Fracassi
Directed by Joel Soisson

Girl Missing is another Lifetime flick featuring dangerous family secrets and a woman in trouble. Is there an evil man? Of course! There is also murder and a mystery child, and even a bit of atmosphere. It suffers from having few enough characters that the obvious outcome stands out too easily, though the actors try to make up for it by giving great performances.

A young girl is found wandering the forest with no memories of where she came from. 15 years later, she’s turned into Francesca Eastwood and is known as Jane (as in Jane Doe, I’m guessing!), and is a struggling artist collection rejections from galleries and living with her childhood orphan friend, Finch. Things change when she gets a letter about a possible parent match.

Meets her “mom”, Sylvia Knowles, and both of them are all smiles and giggles over the objections of the case worker, Gwen, who points out the DNA test hasn’t even come back yet. No bother, Jane agrees to go visit Sylvia for the weekend, Sylvia convinced she is her missing daughter, Savannah.

It turns out Sylvia is loaded. As in billionaire loaded. And Jane/Savannah’s dad is dead from suicide, Sylvia having married the charming Carlo in the intervening years. If you sense some sort of twisted inheritance plot coming up, congratulations! Besides the obvious direction that turns, Jane occasionally spies a young girl running around the estate. The girl is played by the same actress that played young Jane, and we skirt across spooky right to psychological, as she’s the manifestation of Jane’s missing memories.

InMovie News

Doomsday cults go killer crazy on Lifetime’s Ungodly Acts!

September 18, 2015ByTars Tarkas

Don’t you hate it when doomsday cults go on murder sprees and leave dead bodies all over the local parks and then get all confused when their dates of the rapture pass by with no one ascending to Heaven? Lifetime has heard your anguished cries and is severing up a heavy dose of religious wackery with Ungodly Acts! We got a doomsday cult, a “did they or didn’t they” for if the cult ordered a murder, and flashbacks and different stories of the truth. This looks like some good Lifetime fun!

Inspired by actual events. When Melissa Cooper’s body is found hanging from a swing set, the 27-year-old’s death is initially ruled a suicide. But two weeks later a young man, Adam, comes forward claiming he murdered Melissa on the orders of her husband, Daniel Cooper. Adam says that Daniel is the leader of an end times religious cult and that Daniel controls every aspect of the followers’ lives. Daniel Cooper denies all wrongdoing in his wife’s death, but other members of the “Church of the Blessed Light” claim that the charismatic Daniel indeed has a secret life. Melissa’s case is investigated, exploring what really went on behind closed doors in Daniel and Melissa’s marriage, whether Adam acted on his own accord, if Melissa was killed on the orders of her fanatical, newlywed husband or, if Melissa was murdered at all.

Ungodly Acts stars Megan Park, Brant Daugherty, Morgan Taylor Campbell, Christie Burke, and Ashleigh Gryzko. It’s directed by Carl Bessai, who helmed that unneeded Embrace of the Vampire remake that forgot to have a popular actress as the main character, and written by Paul Ziller (cool flick Sea Beast)

Ungodly Acts premieres Saturday, September 19th on Lifetime!

via Lifetime!

InMovie News

The Murder Pact makes a killer deal on Lifetime!

September 11, 2015ByTars Tarkas

Finally the Eyes Wide Shut/Little Red Riding Hood cinematic universe pays off!

Yes, blackmail a bunch of murderers and don’t expect to get murdered. Great plan, genius! But then the killers begin turning on each other and soon everyone is trying to kill each other. Also there is weird masked ball stuff because I guess rich people still do that somehow. The Murder Pact joins The Cheating Pact in meaning we’re going to have a Pact franchise on Lifetime, and I’m okay with that. Eventually they have to get to a movie called Pact Man, right?

After witnessing the accidental death of their classmate Heidi, a group of friends – four rich socialites – flee the scene, not realizing that Heidi’s roommate Lisa witnessed everything. When Lisa starts to drop hints that she knows about the “accident,” the friends decide they can’t trust her to stay quiet, and plot to kill Lisa before she rats them out, burying her body beneath the floorboards in one of their basements. Before long, though, the guilt and paranoia starts to consume them, and they become convinced that Lisa may actually be alive and looking for revenge.

The Murder Pact stars Alexa Vega, Beau Mirchoff, Renee Olstead, Michael J. Willett, and Sean Patrick Thomas. It’s written by John Doolan and directed by Colin Theys, the team that brought us Wally Lambs’ Wishin’ and Hopin’. This is an interesting followup, which I don’t think will be so Christmasy and sweet. But maybe I’m wrong and The Murder Pact will jingle our bells. Only one way to find out!

The Murder Pact premieres Saturday, September 12th on Lifetime!

via Lifetime!

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Sugarbabies (Review)

September 8, 2015ByTars Tarkas

Sugarbabies

2015
Story by Becca Topol and David DeCrane
Screenplay by Becca Topol
Directed by Monika Mitchell

First they sugared the daddies. I said nothing, for I wasn’t a daddy. But then they came to sugar the babies. And I was like, “Seriously, Lifetime?” This is the third film they’ve shown this year where young, nubile girls decide the best way to pay tuition is to get it on with older men for buckets of cash. It’s like the college girls banging old dudes for tuition money films are racing the Unauthorized 90s TV Show Story films for who can flood Lifetime’s airwaves the most! We’ve seen it with Suger Daddies and with Babysitter’s Black Book, and now we dip into the pool for a third time.

Sugarbabies runs a lot of the same numbers as we’ve seen before. Hardworking and smart Katie Woods (Alyson Stoner) arrives at the university and excels at classes, but her working class background means she can’t afford to pay for an expensive but competitive interning opportunity. Luckily for Katie, she’s made friends with Tessa Bouillette (Tiera Skovbye), a wannabe model who is living the high life thanks to an older (and married!) man paying all her bills. We see her initiate Rochelle Cranston (Sarah Dugdale) into the Sugar Babies website (cheered on by fellow sugar bowl enthusiast Sasha (Eva Day)), and thanks to being at the right place at the right time, Katie is introduced to the rich and charming James Smith (Giles Panton) by Tessa.

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