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‘Stranger Danger’ continues on Lifetime Movie Network with a ‘thriller’ — in the very loosest sense of the word — that seems to be trying desperately to crib from films like Burnt Offerings and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit, but forgets to add the spooky stuff as the story grapples with a standard murder mystery filled with characters with bizarre mood swings.
The story focuses on widowed mom of two, Sadie (Nicole Reddinger), and teens Max (Ryan Anthony Holcomb) and Olivia (Piper Collins). Sadie has apparently been unemployed for some time and her money has run out, to the point that they are being evicted from their rental home. Luckily Sadie found an opportunity in the local paper’s Want Ads section (is that still a thing?) for a ‘Family for Hire’. A very unusual request but it just happens to fit Sadie’s needs at that moment. The kids, however, are not too thrilled to be uprooted from their friends, especially since its during the winter break and they just wanted to relax and hang out until school started again, but mom says they need this (which becomes clear when the landlord shows up with those eviction papers). Sadie has visited the home and met with the owners, and she thinks it will be perfect for a few weeks while she looks for a real job. Max and Olivia suggest just staying at a hotel but Sadie has to tell them that her credit cards are all maxed out. When Sadie first visited the homeowners, she noticed the older woman, Evelyn (Gisele Frame), just staring out the window as if in a trance. Her husband Grant (Paul Van Scott) explains it away as just one of her episodes where she zones out for a short time, but she’s fine otherwise. When Sadie and the kids arrive, Grant and Evelyn are welcoming if not a bit overly welcoming, almost immediately referring to them as family. The first thing Max notices is that there are no televisions in the house, but Grant tells him all he needs to be entertained is right outside his bedroom window, with the vast forest beyond the property (throwing in a bit of a ghost story to intentionally spook the kid). But Max won’t have much time for TV because this is a ‘family for hire’, so he will be expected to do chores like cutting the grass and weeds — by hand with a sickle. Olivia gets dusting duty with an old feather duster, and Sadie … well, it’s not really clear what Sadie does because Evelyn does the cooking and Grant washes the dishes. But Evelyn warns Sadie to never go into the attic. (She also gives the same warning to Olivia while she’s dusting the banister, slapping her hand down on the girl’s — chill, lady). It’s not long before Sadie encounters the man on the neighboring property, Jake (John Castle), who warns her to beware of the people she’s living with because they aren’t who they say they are (of course, he has to be intentionally vague to draw out the story), while Grant and Evelyn mention some dispute with Jake and that he’s a liar and is not allowed on their property.
Things begin to get more weird by the day, and night (Evelyn begins drugging the water at dinnertime to make the family sleepy for some reason), and Max notices that Grant keeps calling him ‘Johnny’. Grant brushes it off by saying back in the old days they called everyone Johnny. Uh, sure. As luck would have it, Sadie finds a job opening that fits her skill set (school administrator) and books an interview. To celebrate, Grant and Evelyn take Sadie and the kids out to a local diner for dinner — a real family dinner — and Grant gives Sadie an envelope. Inside is an amended will leaving the home and property to Sadie — no strings attached — with which she can do anything she wants, even sell it to help with her money problems. The time comes for Sadie to head to the city, but right before she leaves, Grant is tinkering under the hood of her car, making sure all is well for her long trip, and before she can get out of the driveway she nearly runs Jake over. He’s there with another warning to not leave her kids alone with the couple but she has to get to her interview. Jake promises to watch over them like they were his own kids … and promptly walks back to his farm where he can’t possibly see anything. Thanks, Jake. While Evelyn and Grant are otherwise occupied, Max and Olivia pick the lock to the attic door and make a shocking discovery — an old bed frame with chains and shackles. They also find old photos of Grant and Evelyn and a young boy, obviously named Johnny. But before they can both make it out of the attic, Grant and Evelyn return. Olivia escapes and Max has to make his way out of the open window in the attic, getting to the ground just as Grant was rounding the corner of the house but he tells Grant he was just looking for something to sharpen the sickle.
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Sadie has her interview which goes so well she’s hired on the spot. Heading back to the country, her car’s gas pedal gets stuck and the car speeds down the road, ending up in a ditch but Sadie is unharmed (now, how she paid for the tow truck and repairs is unclear since she has very little money and no credit cards, but we’ll just pretend those facts were never mentioned. Meanwhile, Evelyn has prepared some lunch and drugged lemonade for the kids, and before Max and Olivia know it, they are knocked out and later wake up in the attic chained to the bed frames. Max uses some hair pin or clip Olivia was given by Evelyn to pick the locks on his cuffs but he can’t get Olivia free before Grant arrives. Max flees to get help but heads out into the woods, going toward the old swimming hole Grant and Evelyn have an affinity for. He could have run to Jake’s farm but that would have made too much sense (and none of this would have happened had Jake actually kept an eye on things). Can Max evade Grant, can Olivia get out of the attic, and can Sadie make it home before it’s too late? And will the mystery of Johnny — and the beef between Grant & Evelyn and Jake — finally be revealed … and will it make any sense?
Right from the start, Danger in the Countryside feels like it wants to be Burnt Offerings. A family moves into a big house in the middle of nowhere and instead of a vacation they end up becoming caretakers. not only for the house but for a mysterious woman who lives in the attic, the mother slowly becoming possessed by the house. Here, there is just an attic to avoid but no supernatural overtones, although Evelyn’s ‘spells’ seem to suggest as much (until the truth is revealed as to why she stares out the window frequently in the direction of the swimming hole). The basic framework is there though. The story also cribs a lot from The Visit, which itself was a riff on Hansel & Gretel but tackled the issue of ‘sundowning’ which is almost what seems to be happening with Evelyn and her wild mood swings. It especially feels like The Visit when Sadie leaves the kids alone with Grant and Evelyn, despite their concerns earlier that something is off but Sadie needs them to play along until she can find a job (Max is especially angry when Grant cuts the power cord to his TV and game system which Sadie had retrieved from storage). Unfortunately, the script by Ken Miyamoto, who wrote the much better The Boy Who Vanished and the excellent The Bear Lake Murders (which was a clever riff on 1980s slasher films), fails to engage on any level, feeling much longer than it actually is and giving us conflicting story points. Haylie Duff, who directed the really entertaining I Am Your Biggest Fan and the okay Shattered Vows, does her best with trying to build suspense where there is none, but she does manage to get some pretty decent performances from the cast (being an actor seems to always help get good performances when you step behind the camera).
The best performance of the cast comes from Ryan Anthony Holcomb as Max. He feels like an authentic teenager but he’s also not a whiny, entitled teen. He’s actually more open to this experience than Olivia, and Holcomb makes it feel like he’s genuinely interested in learning how to tend to things without modern mechanics. Of course, he just wants to be a kid and play his video games too but it all feels real. He also conveys real fear when he’s trying to run from Grant, and when they come face-to-face, his rage is earned, the way he screams at Grant really packs some emotion. Holcomb really gives a terrific performance. Piper Collins doesn’t get as much to do as Olivia, often taking a back seat to Max. Nicole Reddinger’s Sadie just isn’t written well enough. As a mom, she is trying to do what’s best for the kids, but when they come to her with their concerns, she brushes them off even though she has witnessed some odd behavior. Sadie is more of a plot device than a character.
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The characters of Grant and Evelyn are also written all over the place. One minute they are kindly grandparent figures, the next minute their personalities change like Jekyll and Hyde. Paul Van Scott has more to do as Grant, but the way his personality flips should be concerning. Gisele Frame’s Evelyn is written in such a way that you never really know what her issues are — is she suffering from early onset dementia or is there something else at play? It does become more clear at the end, but there are things that she does that have no answers, like why did she put sleeping pills in the water at dinner (which Max could clearly taste … but he drank it anyway because Grant said it was just the minerals from the ground that the water was pumped from). Frame does what she can, but she is just given a character that is all over the place. John Castle is here to do little more than be the ‘Crazy Ralph’ character from Friday the 13th warning Sadie that they’re all doomed (though not quite that unhinged, but again, the writing does him no favors).
The biggest flaw of Danger in the Countryside is that it’s just boring. LMN needs to lean more into the supernatural-ish aspects when it comes to movies like this, even if it just has a Scooby-Doo sort of ‘I would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for you darned kids’ resolution. It’s hard to forgive a thriller that is boring because you want to be kept on the edge of your seat, not battling you eyelids from slamming shut. The one saving grace is Holcomb who really elevates every scene he’s in, really carrying the whole movie on his shoulders. Hopefully he gets to demonstrate his acting skills in some better projects worthy of his talents.
Danger in the Countryside has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.