Lifetime
Lifetime. You finally did it! You finally broadcast a mystery-thriller with some great twists, the biggest of all being that the movie doesn’t take itself so deadly serious.
Right from the title, you have to expect that I Have to Kill My Neighbor isn’t going to be a hardcore drama despite the opening scene featuring a dead man being buried somewhere (brilliantly bookended at the end with a similar shot). We won’t go too deeply into the plot because this is one that is going to be a ton of fun to watch unfold. The basics go like this: a neighborhood (located somewhere outside of Buffalo, based on the stock footage of the city skyline) seems like any other neighborhood, except not all of the neighbors are on the best of terms. Married couple Tom and Lauren are especially troubled by next door neighbor Madeline, whose husband vanished after the two had a spat, who picks at every little violation she can find of the HOA rules … most of which she created herself. The biggest sticking point with Madeline is the fence that separates their property which, as it turns out, was built six inches onto her property line (not by Tom and Lauren, but by the previous owners), and now Madeline is demanding the couple tear down the fence and replace it with one of her choosing at their expense. Tom absolutely is not going to do this, and Lauren attempts to soothe things with Madeline with the help of HOA president/influencer/podcaster Robin … to no avail. Lauren also does not get along well with her mother-in-law, who seems to blame her for the issues with Madeline while doting on her son. When Lauren comes home one evening, the house is completely ransacked, blood evident, and her lawyer husband missing. It’s not long before Lauren gets a call and a photo of a battered, bound and gagged Tom with a simple demand for his return — kill Madeline. But can she commit murder, even for her husband? And who exactly has Tom? Could it be some underworld criminals he’s in the process of prosecuting? Could it be Madeline’s brother-in-law, whom Lauren believes has been arguing with her neighbor over possession of the house? Or could it be someone closer to home? As Lauren gets Madeline to go along with a plan to fake her murder, secrets are revealed and Lauren finds herself in the strange situation of needing to depend on Madeline … but can she?
Lifetime
I had high hopes for I Have to Kill My Neighbor after seeing the trailer and title. There’s no way this could have been a straight thriller, and I would have been hugely disappointed if it had been. But after quite some time of begging Lifetime to just let the humor in some of their overly-dramatic movies actually play out, they finally have and this is undoubtedly one of the network’s best movies of the year. The story by Matt Sweeney — just his second screenplay! — is absolute perfection, expertly blending the drama and the macabre humor, giving us plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and dialogue, while also constructing a really good mystery that takes some crazy turns and keeps us guessing to the end what happened to Tom. There is a wonderfully developed and growing friendship between Lauren and Madeline, and one of the funniest scenes in the movie comes when a detective shows up at Lauren’s house, asking questions about Madeline, with Lauren visibly making things up on the fly, the situation only exacerbated when mother-in-law Estelle also shows up, concerned that her dear boy has not been answering her calls, giving Lauren an opportunity to tell the woman what she really thinks of her but only as a way to deflect from all the questions from the detective. Lauren is also bailed out when ‘Tom’ calls, which makes the scene even funnier. There are some moments of pure drama in the story, but the overall tone is a farce, a spoof of those deadly serious thrillers the network usually airs, many of which could have benefited from a little more humor. Director Tyson Caron keeps the film from toppling over into a complete parody of the genre with very skillful direction that treats the material as a straight thriller, allowing the humor to grow out of the absurd situation, expertly guiding his actors so they also play things as straight as they can so that no one is ever winking at the camera to let us know they’re all in on the joke. Everything about this movie just works so beautifully, and it holds your attention so well that you just hang on every word, every scene, eager to see what’s going to happen next. Most of these types of films follow some formula and are so obvious that you know how they’re going to end before the midway point. I Have to Kill My Neighbor is so much fun and so enjoyable that you don’t want to think that far ahead because you are just held rapt in each moment. This is some genius work.
Lifetime
None of this would work without a brilliant cast, and Caron has assembled the best. Finding an actress who can play the humor of a dramatic situation is not an easy task, but Caron struck gold with the casting of Sarah Luby as Lauren. From her first encounter with Madeline to her attempt to diffuse the situation about the fence — which is actually a major part of the story — to the whole concocting of the plan to fake Madeline’s death, Luby balances the drama and humor, nicely playing the absurdity of the scene with the detective so it’s funny but not overly-ridiculous, but also growing a bond with Madeline where they have to depend on each other, and having a really touching moment with her former nemesis when the truth about Madeline’s husband is revealed. She truly is brilliant in the role, and I can’t think of anyone else who could have done such a wonderful job.
Matching her in every way, playing off of Luby and against her, is Lauren Cochrane (who was also terrific in Hallmark’s A Suite Holiday Romance), giving Madeline a completely unpleasant demeanor which could just be a result of the mystery of her husband’s disappearance or it’s just how Madeline is, a stickler for the rules who tolerates not even a single blade of grass being more than two-and-a-half inches tall. She gets a lot of the film’s funniest lines, such as the one when Lauren suggests that Madeline should be ‘murdered’ on the toilet, and she is a hoot when she tries to rescue Lauren from the detective and Estelle by pretending to be Tom, calling her phone from the bedroom upstairs. But she is also called into suspicion when Lauren encounters brother-in-law Jay, and his story does not mesh with Madeline’s about why they were arguing. There is also a moment when Madeline tries to keep Lauren from going to Jay’s house, and while she reluctantly gives Lauren a hug, she expertly lifts the phone out of Lauren’s pocket. This woman may have more up her sleeve than we first imagined, and Cochrane is brilliant, with some terrific comic timing. She and Luby play so well off of each other, I’d love to see them paired up again, perhaps as their characters in their new lives following the climax of the movie. Or even maybe in a lighthearted Hallmark mystery.
Darren Martens is also good as Tom in his few scenes at the top of the movie, never taking any of Madeline’s threats too seriously. Brynn Godenir plays Robin as the stereotypical social media influencer with a self-help podcast, giving her a bit of Valley Girl attitude, quite funny when she’s trying to play mediator for Lauren and Madeline. Monique Marcker is also very funny as the overbearing Estelle, taking it upon herself to criticize Lauren’s cooking during a dinner and quickly changing her tune when Lauren points out Tom did the cooking. Marcker plays Estelle like every classic sitcom mother-in-law, and has an absolutely hilarious moment near the end of the film with a visual gag that was completely unnecessary but laugh-out-loud funny. Ray Strachan plays Detective Trunbull as the complete straight man, utterly baffled by Lauren’s behavior and even more confused when Estelle shows up to report her son missing. Derek Kun has the one completely straight role in the film as Jay, at first seen arguing with Madeline, then being forced to reveal to Lauren what he’s been doing and that he feels Madeline killed his brother.
Lifetime
I had high hopes going in to I Have to Kill My Neighbor, and it did not disappoint, expertly written and directed, beautifully acted, delivering a nice mix of humor, drama and mystery with a delicious twist. It’s everything I’ve wanted from a Lifetime movie for some time now, and it exceeded my expectations. This one is definitely at the top of the Lifetime list for the year to date. Don’t miss it! Oh, and whoever came up with this movie’s search engine name, Gaagle, deserves an award for how goofy it is!
I Have to Kill My Neighbor has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.