Lifetime
Lifetime has been killing it (no pun intended) with its Sunday night movies which, sadly, seem to be lowest on their list of priorities to promote. With Abducted in the Everglades, the network can’t even seem to decide what the actual title is because if you look for it on IMDb, the title comes up Lost in the Everglades and even on Lifetime’s official YouTube page, the ‘sneak peek’ video has that same title! And honestly, this movie deserves much better after the debacle that was Killing the Competition the night before with Melissa Joan Hart. It’s funny that this particular weekend on Lifetime has shaped up to be the ‘Battle of the ’90s TV Icons’ and, surprisingly, Tori Spelling takes the crown.
Abducted in the Everglades stars Spelling as Beverly, an apparently single mom who runs a diner and whose daughter Carli (Tommi Rose) and her friend Simone (Nikki Nunziato) take off from Indiana (maybe, that’s where Bevely lives) to South Beach for spring break. Beverly is understandably concerned but she trusts her daughter to do the right thing. Unfortunately her daughter’s friend is trouble, and the girls aren’t in South Beach five minutes before Simone has attracted a local who invites them to a private party on the beach away from the tourists. Carli reluctantly agrees to go with them, and once there she’s shocked to see her ex Luke (Joseph Cannon) show up, which is awkward since they recently broke up. Turns out the other guy, Pete (Nick Flaig), is his cousin and all of this is purely a coincidence. Carli makes the best of a bad situation … but it gets worse as Simone starts to have a seizure on the beach, foaming at the mouth. Carli tries to help but finds herself getting woozy, passing out next to her friend. Turns out this wasn’t such a coincidence after all as the guys take Carli and leave Simone to die. Luckily she’s found early the next morning and taken to the hospital, and Beverly is alerted by the authorities that she is in a coma … but there is no sign of her daughter.
Beverly jets to Florida first thing and makes her way to the hospital, hoping that Simone will wake up and tell her what happened. Leaving the hospital, Beverly asks a random stranger if he could call her a ride since her phone is dead, and as she explains the situation about her missing daughter he offers to drive her around town. The man, Ray (Nick Ballard), even lets Beverly use his Jeep so she can try to follow the clues she’s gathered. As Beverly begins to get closer to solving Carli’s disappearance, she just happens to bump into Pete (again, not so coincidentally as he heard Simone was waking up and had gone to the hospital to put her back to sleep — permanently but was thwarted by Beverly’s arrival and Simone being unable to remember what happened) who offers to take Beverly by boat to the last known location of Carli — in the middle of the Everglades (which is where he tossed her phone). Dumping Bev in the water, Pete takes off but she was able to let Ray know where they were going and he shows up in the nick of time to save her, and the two go off in pursuit of Pete and Carli, hoping they can reach her before it’s too late. But when Beverly discovers Luke is also part of this, she throws caution to the wind and does anything and everything she can to save her daughter before any of them become alligator food.
Lifetime
Tori Spelling gets a bad rap because a lot of people originally saw her as the ultimate ‘nepo baby’, her father Aaron casting her in his TV show Beverly Hills 90210. She’s also gotten a lot of press, most of it bad, because of her marriage but she has been forging out on her own, making her own choices about her family and career. And with Abducted in the Everglades, she actually made a very good choice with this material because she gets to play a mom, a role she is very familiar with. And she’s really good, especially in the scene with Simone in the hospital. You believe every word, every bit of emotion she puts into that scene and that carries her through the rest of the movie. That’s not to say her character doesn’t do a few stupid things, like running off with Pete to the middle of nowhere, but Spelling sells her motherly concern to make it work. For anyone who thinks she’s just gotten a career off of her name, take a look at her performance here. She proves that she’s much more than Aaron Spelling’s daughter. Spelling is also an executive producer on the movie, so she made some good choices and this movie soars miles above Melissa Joan Hart’s Killing the Competition.
Tommi Rose also does a great job as Carli, showing that she’s unsure about going off with a stranger but willing to go in support of her friend. But the character also makes some smart choices like keeping her phone and storing her backpack at a stand sort of like a coat check. One thing that she did wrong was not put her small travel bag across her body, but it turned out leaving it hanging from her shoulder meant it got left behind when she was abducted, a major clue that helped Beverly determine where she may be. It’s a small detail and a convenient plot point but it works. Rose also does some good work as she tries to negotiate her way out of captivity with Luke, and never allows Carli to be the victim, never once hesitating to kick some ass. Her performance is totally authentic.
Nick Flaig is perfection as Pete, always giving off a sense of masculine toxicity that deep down translates to complete insecurity when it comes to women. Pete’s bro attitude obviously has gotten him nowhere with the ladies even though he can turn on the charm long enough to lure them to the beach, but he just ends up being a coward once his actions are exposed, throwing his cousin under the bus to save his own skin. Joseph Cannon is also good as Luke, totally convincing when acting surprised to see Carli, but slowing coming unglued as the situation escalates, finally losing it as he exposes his own insecurities to Carli, blaming her for making him do this to her because she broke up with him. In his, and Pete’s, eyes Carli felt she was too good for Luke and that’s why she broke up with him, so he cooked up this idea to simply take some scandalous photos while she was unconscious to post online and ruin her chances of a college scholarship. It was Pete, whose own insecurities got the best of him, who escalated the situation that was on the verge of turning into multiple homicides.
Lifetime
Nick Ballard’s Ray proves to be good support for Beverly, making him a decent, upstanding guy willing to help a stranger, putting his own life at risk. It may seem odd for anyone to do such a thing, but the script does give Ray a backstory that explains his willingness to help Beverly. Nikki Nunziato perfectly captures the essence of a girl on a mission to party, but once she’s carted off to the hospital she gets little screen time until the end of the movie. Antoni Corone also has a nice moment as a local who knows Pete and Luke, thinking they are just some good old boys from the area but quickly realizing Pete is dangerous when Carli pops out of his house wielding a machete, putting his own life at risk to protect the girl.
The script by Dane K. Bruan, Thomas Dolan-Gavitt and Richard Pierce is a taut thriller that actually makes sense, building and building the tension throughout the movie, never making the characters do some absurdly stupid things. The characters are developed nicely and make the story totally believable. Director Damián Romay also does some great work with the stunning Florida locations — you can tell this is obviously not filmed in Toronto — the scenery always awash with the golden sunlight during the day, the vibrant teals and pinks of South Beach illuminating the night. Everything just totally immerses the viewer in the Florida locations and it’s a very welcome change from the movies filmed in Canada using stock footage to pinpoint the story’s location.
Abducted in the Everglades gives Tori Spelling, and the rest of the cast, some juicy material to work with and she acquits herself well. The movie is gripping and filled with tension, turning out to be better than it should have been and well worth a watch. Now if Lifetime could just decide what the movie’s title is.
Abducted in the Everglades has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
A mother’s LOVE is her greatest WEAPON | Abducted In The Everglades
Lifetime