Lifetime
Another week, another ‘Sunday Night Thrills’ movie from Lifetime, this one a pretty decent thriller with several twists, but the biggest one is pretty much given away by the title.
Picture Perfect Sister-in-Law stars Analisa Wall as former investigative journalist Parker Beaumont, now a university lecturer sharing her insights, while also living with the memory of a case she got a bit too involved with that nearly took her life. Parker had been investigating a man who used toy carousels to lure children into his clutches, and he nearly captured Parker because she just got a little too sloppy, so she changed careers and moved back to her home town to be closer to her brother, David, and his family, more than happy to be the fun auntie who dotes on and spoils her niece and nephew. And Parker also gets along famously with her sister-in-law, Kate, much to David’s chagrin because they love to team up and rib him mercilessly. David and Kate also have a next door neighbor, Harvey, who is always working in his yard and offering them, and Parker, bags of lemons. During one of Parker’s visits, he stops her and asks if she ever goes by the name Alyssa because someone had been inquiring, but the name is unfamiliar to her.
Lifetime
Life is good for Parker, but Kate is trying to push her into the dating scene again after her break-up with boyfriend Jesse, who is also a detective, and Parker finally agrees to go on a date with a guy named Chris. Chris is very curious about Parker’s past, maybe a little too curious. But everything is good until Parker gets home one night and sees that the window in her front door is broken and the door is open. She immediately does the smart thing and calls 9-1-1, and the operator tells her to seek shelter in a safe place until the police arrive. Instead, she goes in the house and discovers a carousel music box on her kitchen counter. Is this a message from the ‘Carousel Killer’? And how could that be possible because he’s in prison. Is someone working with him on the outside to terrorize Parker after all these years? Parker pays a visit to Jesse to let him know what happened, and Jesse is concerned enough to do some digging for her. Parker tries to move on and not let this one event derail her life, but more and more things begin to pile on making her fearful that the killer, Zach, is toying with her. Parker notices a man hovering by the doorway at her class, then she sees him again at the restaurant when she’s on another date with Chris (who really asks some prying questions about things Parker doesn’t remember telling him, so is he part of the terror campaign?). Things escalate when David, Kate and the kids come home and find a box at the front door, a carousel snowglobe inside. Also, Harvey dies under mysterious circumstances, although the police believe he just fell off the roof and hit his head. Parker can’t risk putting her family in danger, so against Jesse’s advice she goes to the prison to talk to Zach, and while the conversation goes nowhere, Zach makes some comments that make Parker realize he has no idea she moved as he specifically referenced her previous house. So if it isn’t Zach, who is taunting her with the carousels? Parker manages to track down the mystery man who tells her he’s actually a private investigator, and he shows her a picture of a man with a scarred face, and warns her that if she sees him she needs to call him immediately. Parker is a bit spooked, but she does not realize that someone in a Black Hoodie, naturally, is following her, and that person also pays a visit to the P.I., shooting him in the doorway of his motel room. Later at David and Kate’s house, Parker is with the kids and there is a loud knock at the door. Instead of checking to see who it is, Parker just opens the door and sees the man with the scarred face pretending to be a delivery man with a package for Kate, insisting that he needs to wait inside the house. She manages to get the door shut and locked and the man goes away, but Parker knows this situation is serious. Luckily the kids didn’t see or hear anything, but when Kate and David come home, Parker is more than happy to bring the kids to her house for a sleepover. It’s there that Kate admits to her that the man at the door was her ex-husband, a dangerous and violent man, and that her real name is Alyssa. She changed her name to try and hide from him, but this doesn’t quite explain the carousels. Kate also warns her not to trust anyone new that comes along, and Parker recalls the probing questions Chris had been asking. Is he somehow involved in all of this? Kate suddenly leaves town, allegedly for a work event, but as the days pass Parker grows concerned but her brother has a talk with her, telling her that he and the family need some space from her because she is becoming unhinged. Well that’s a slap in the face. Left to her own devices, Parker uses her investigative skills to try and put the pieces together, leading her to a cabin where all of her questions are answered in the most shocking way.
Lifetime
Picture Perfect Sister-in-Law is actually a pretty decent thriller with a major plot point in the story that turns out to be a huge red herring although the script, by Shannon Latimer, never lets on that it’s all misdirection until the actual reveal of what’s really been happening during the climax. I don’t want to say much so as not to ruin any of the surprises, even though the title really does a disservice to Latimer’s work. I’d be curious to know if Picture Perfect Sister-in-Law was her original title, or if someone decided to change it. Sometimes I wonder if the executives who come up with these titles just think their audiences are stupid and need to have everything telegraphed to them. They may as well have just called this ‘The Sister-in-Law Did it’ if they wanted to completely blow the ending. I’m sure there are much better title options that don’t act as spoilers. But I have to really give Latimer her kudos for constructing this mystery-thriller as her resumé is just a list of lighthearted holiday romance movies. This is some really impressive work. Director Dave Thomas (Murder in Music City) does a really nice job of building the mystery surrounding the carousels without ever really telling us where the story is going, keeping the actors’ performances in check as well so that no one plays their roles with the ‘I did it’ neon sign over their head. It all adds up to a really nifty payoff, it’s just taken down a notch by the title.
The cast is also excellent. Analisa Wall is very convincing as a journalist-turned-lecturer, never really able to leave her former profession behind even though she really does try to move through her life without the burden of her past. She does make the relationships with her family, and even Jesse, feel authentic, but even when she tries to be herself her instincts acquired from her journalist days always kick in when something just doesn’t sit right, like when Chris asks her questions that don’t seem to relate to anything she said to him. She also makes us side with Parker when David called her ‘unhinged’, because she’s not acting like a raving lunatic, she is desperate to try and convince people these threats are real. It seems that Jesse is the only one who takes her seriously. Wall does a great job of putting us in Parker’s shoes, allowing us to dig into the mystery with her. Christie Campo is also very good as Kate. She has great sisterly chemistry with Wall, so all of their scenes together just feel completely natural, and when she tells Parker the truth about her ex, it becomes a genuinely emotional moment but she keeps Kate strong. Of course, as the title implies, there may be more to Kate than Campo shows on the surface, and it is terrific that she never once lets on that there is more to her story than we see.
Lifetime
Eddie Davenport is also good as David (although whoever decided to paint his natural salt-and-pepper hair and beard black making him look like the old G.I. Joe with the flocked hair and beard should be reprimanded), a total family man, happy to have his sister nearby again, but then really turning on her before the end, unable to see that she is right about everything … sort of. Alec Adams doesn’t have a lot of scenes as Jesse, but when he is on screen he has a great relationship with Wall, making it feel like they do have a history, and for a change he is a cop who actually believes the things she is saying. Roy Coulter only has a few scenes as the mystery man, Bob, making him feel ominous as he seems to be following Parker, but then completely on the up-and-up once she confronts him, making everything he says totally convincing, leading us to hope he will be the one to step in and save the day. Conor Marsh plays Chris as a guy over-compensating a bit on his dates with Parker. He’s not trying to be suspicious, he’s trying to show her that he’s attentive and paying attention to what she’s saying, perhaps not paying attention was what led to his divorce, inadvertently making himself a suspect. Adam Harper is appropriately terrifying as Matt when he shows up at the door, and just as threatening when he shows up again at the climax. Mike Boland does a nice job as well as Zach, still enjoying taunting Parker when she visits him in prison, but giving subtle little flashes in his expressions that say he really has no idea why she’s asking if he’s working with someone on the outside, but playing along just to constantly keep her on her toes. Dean Feldman also makes Harvey a sweet guy, maybe a little too neighborly, but still a guy who didn’t deserve his fate. Riley Hough puts in a couple of scenes as the typically arrogant cop who makes it seem like Parker is completely imposing on his time, never taking any of her claims seriously.
Overall, Picture Perfect Sister-in-Law works really well, it does keep you on the edge of your seat, but I have to take a star off simply because the title drains the story of almost all of its suspense, making us always wonder when the other shoe with sister-in-law Kate is going to drop. It really is a disservice to all of the good work everyone did to make this better than the average Lifetime thriller.
Picture Perfect Sister-in-Law has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.