Movie Review :: Lifetime Movie Network’s A Young Father’s Nightmare

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LMN’s newest ‘Hateful and Grateful” abduction thriller comes with a very accurate title, A Young Father’s Nightmare … which appears to be the third title the film has had following Girlfriend Missing — still accurate — and Double Trouble, which makes very little sense but it still could reference one scene in the film. Perhaps switching the focus of the title to a male character, everyone involved hoped they could draw in more male viewers. Too bad they didn’t pick a better movie to try to win over a new audience.

A Young Father’s Nightmare centers around ’19-year-old’ Tom, whose girlfriend Bethany recently gave birth to their son Liam. While celebrating Bethany’s birthday with Tom’s mother Jackie and his soon-to-be ex-stepfather Ross at the coffee shop owned by Jackie, the young couple is gifted the keys to the family cabin for a weekend getaway, since Tom has been busy with his studies in medical school, and is a new father. Tom also has big plans for the weekend — he’s planning to propose to Bethany, and Jackie gives him her mother’s engagement ring to propose with. But is Bethany secure in her relationship with Tom? She seems to have been bothered by Tom’s overly friendly interaction with coffee shop employee Sophia — they’ve known each other since they were children we’re told several time — and they all seem to dislike Sophia’s douchebaggy new-ish boyfriend Mikey. But on their first night in the cabin, after Liam goes to sleep, Tom cozies up to Bethany in front of the fireplace, drops to his knee and proposes … and her reaction leaves him a bit dumbfounded because she takes a really long time to say yes convincingly. In the middle of the night, Bethany is out on the porch talking to someone saying she can’t do this anymore and she doesn’t want to hurt him, and when Tom wakes up a couple hours later Bethany and Liam are gone. Not just out for a walk gone, but she took all of their belongings and the car gone.

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Tom calls his mom and she brings him home, and the police are called — surprisingly they didn’t get the ‘call us after she’s been missing for 24 hours’ response (probably because there is a baby involved) — and Ross shows up for some support, but no one can think of any reason why Bethany would up and leave like that. On top of all of this, Ross and Jackie are in the midst of a divorce and the papers arrive at the most inopportune time because this trauma seems to be drawing the couple back together (even though it was Ross who dumped Jackie). Tom plays detective after he finds Bethany’s phone in his suitcase, and sees a video she made about being afraid of ‘him’ but without context it makes it sound like she’s talking about Tom, so he has no plans to show this to the police. It all gets even more complicated when photos start popping up on social media depicting Tom and Sophia together, which Tom claims are absolutely fake. Tom doesn’t know that the police have put a trace on Bethany’s phone and when he gets a location ping from the car, so do the police, and they all end up in the woods where the car is found abandoned. And there is a bloody rag in the back. The police form a search party after Tom is sent home, and Ross joins. It’s not long before they find the body of a female, whose face is so battered it’s impossible to determine her identity but seeing as Bethany is missing and the body was near the car (though no sign of Baby Liam), Tom is the prime suspect and is promptly arrested. DNA results come back and it’s not Bethany … it’s Sophia! After there were suggestions that Mikey made a pass at Bethany, could he and Sophia have gotten into a fight that resulted in her death? And does Mikey have Bethany and Liam? While Tom is snooping around at Bethany’s house, he finds a moon-shaped charm and he runs into Mikey, who swears he never touched Bethany. Tom shows the charm to Jackie, which leads to a star-shaped charm match and a receipt for a moon and star necklace … and the discovery of a pamphlet for DNA testing. Was Bethany unsure of the baby’s father? Doing more snooping, Tom is surprised to find someone else at Bethany’s, who knocks him out. Tom wakes up bound, gagged and blindfolded in the cabin, and Bethany and Liam are there as well, along with the person who knocked him out … the real father of Liam and the man Bethany was leaving Tom to be with … except she has fallen in love with Tom so that complicates things, and when Jackie shows up that makes things even more complicated to the point that she ends up trapped in the garage which is set on fire. Will Bethany stand by and let Tom and Jackie die? Can Tom get free to save Jackie, and can he forgive Bethany? And will the police show up in time to save everyone and catch the perp?

A Young Father’s Nightmare has a lot going on to set up the story, but with only six main characters (eight including the detective and Bethany’s father Phil, who are not suspects in any way), even with all of the busy work to distract you from who is actually responsible for Bethany’s ‘disappearance’, and one of them dying mid-way through the story, we only have two real suspects — Mikey and Ross (although at one point it may seem like Jackie could be involved). So is it the guy who only appears a couple of times and each time swears he had no intentions with Bethany and was truly in love with Sophia, or is it the guy who is supposed to be leaving the family but keeps inserting himself into the situation? You can do the math. And maybe instead of leaving such cryptic messages about who she was terrified of, Bethany could have just told someone, anyone, what was going on (of course she used the ‘I was totally manipulated’ excuse, and admitting to Tom who Liam’s father is would have also caused some issues between them, for sure). There is some absurd plotting along the way — Tom is brought to the station for questioning a couple of times and is arrested once, only to be set free a few hours later each time — but the worst plot point offender is the discovery of the body in the woods. As an audience, we have to take at face value (pun not intended) that the victim is unidentifiable but we are later shown a flashback to where Sophia is running from the perpetrator, trips and simply bonks her forehead on a log. That’s it! We see nothing that comes close to her sustaining such damage as described, and the person chasing her just runs off after he realizes she’s dead (and she didn’t even seem to hit her head that hard to make her unrecognizable … or dead). And how Sophia ended up in that particular spot at that particular moment to see the man and Bethany in the car raises even more questions, as does the fact that she was wearing Bethany’s engagement ring which the man slipped on her finger. Did Bethany just hand it over to him to put on the dead girl’s finger? That is all left to our imagination. And why can two people not figure out how to open a door when Jackie is trapped in the garage? It must have had a lock on the knob inside the house that Tom could have just turned to unlock but the whole scene is unintentionally hilarious as he and Jackie struggle to get it open (also there is a big window in the door Tom could have broken but didn’t — no budget for fake glass, I suppose). The script, by Paul Howard Hunt, also has to do some backflips to incorporate the ‘moon and star’ motif into the story which unlocks the secret of who is behind the whole situation, but the whole thing becomes an exercise in frustration and indifference.

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What helps elevate this from a one to two star movie are the performances (some of them, anyway). Andrew Reid is excellent as Tom, perfectly conveying the young father’s nightmare of losing his child and fiancée, the fear and terror he experiences not knowing if they are dead or alive. He gives Tom a lot of determination to put the pieces together since the police seem ineffective, as usual in these types of movies, but he wears all of his emotions on his sleeve, giving a truly authentic performance as a young man who fears he is losing the things he loves most. Kate Dailey does a good job for the most part as mom Jackie. She has to balance a lot of different emotions, showing empathy for Tom’s feelings while having her own complicated feelings for Ross, the man who opted out of their relationship completely out of the blue but is now showing up for both her and Tom. She tries to maintain a comfortable distance from Ross, emotionally, but as things keep piling up and Tom keeps getting to be the main focus of the investigation, the whole situation draws her closer to Ross to the point that she thinks maybe this divorce business was all too hasty. John Castle is also very good as Ross (nice to see him finally get a leading role as he’s become the male version of Alana Hawley Purvis, showing up in multiple movies in succession in roles of varying degrees), always putting his soon-to-be former family first, regarding Tom as his son (and not taking it personally when Tom lashes out at one point and says he’s not a real father), always supporting Jackie, concerned that they aren’t being completely honest with the police, but willing to help in any way possible. And even though Ross is the one who wanted out of the marriage, Castle shows that he still has clear feelings for Jackie so perhaps even he is questioning his decision. But is it all a ruse? Castle’s performance is so good that you almost don’t even consider him to be the suspect even when there are only two to choose from.

The supporting cast is fine. Allen Burns as the detective just seems to show up and say his lines with varying degrees of aggravation, but at least he doesn’t make the cop a total jerk. He is just trying to do his job but the writing makes him a bit too rash at times with his decisions. Alyona Real does a nice job as Bethany in her few short scenes, seeming to be totally in love with Tom at the beginning, showing some real fear in her videos and during that phone call at the cabin, and being totally compassionate at the end when all is revealed but showing that Bethany’s love for Tom is real. Stephen Manley has a few good scenes as Bethany’s father, Phil, although his one moment where he relates his experience having to identify her body is a bit over-the-top. Kellan Jackson doesn’t get a lot to do, but he plays the D-bag pretty well in the opening scene, while his other appearances mainly require him to yell at Tom that he had nothing to do with Bethany. Analisa Southworth Wall only has two scenes as Sophia but in the opening scene she does seem like a good friend to the family, and she seems to like Mikey.

Director Ben Meyerson keeps the story and the performances grounded, making this a less flashy production than his recent My Mother Looked Just Like You, but some of the script contrivances needed a bit more finesse to not make them feel silly — especially that door moment which leaves you wondering if anyone involved had ever turned a doorknob. Of course these movies have maybe a two week production period so there are a lot of things that have to be overlooked, and the director and cast have to make the most of what they’re given in the script. It would be nice if the writers just had a little more time to review their work, or have someone else review it to iron out the questionable story points — like someone should have said, ‘Do we really need that shot of Sophia hitting her head? Because it totally contradicts the description of her injuries’, or ‘Can we have a shot of the doorknob showing some kind of damage so it appears to be impossible to turn?’ — polishing the story to make it a bit more realistic. As it stands, A Young Father’s Nightmare is a passable mystery-thriller that is completely elevated by the performances, particularly that of Andrew Reid. He really is the star here, while everyone else plays off of his excellent work. Reid really makes this one watchable.

A Young Father’s Nightmare has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.