Movie Review :: Lifetime’s No One Believed Me

Lifetime

Lifetime’s ‘Sunday Night Thrills’ movies are starting to get less and less thrilling, turning more ridiculous and convoluted with each new movie, often committing the unforgivable sin of just being boring. Many of those things describe No One Believed Me.

No One Believed Me opens with a young woman, hands bound, running through the woods as she is being pursued by a figure dressed all in black, only the eyes exposed. The woman has a perfect hiding spot behind a large tree, then decides to run right past the pursuer and hide behind a smaller tree, but she has to keep running until she reaches a cliff. Looking down, a river rages but her drop point looks pretty rocky. She jumps nonetheless. Cut to a house where Jane Welsh is frantically cleaning for the arrival of her sister Amy. Husband Dan thinks she’s going a bit overboard because it’s not like her sister hasn’t seen the house before. They have a very young daughter so there is always some disarray but she has to make things perfect. A knock at the door signals Amy’s arrival but when Jane opens the door, Amy is there with a police officer claiming that she had been kidnapped (why she needed a police escort to the house is unknown since, moving forward, the police don’t seem to believe her story because she has been unable to give them any evidence or location as to where she was being held). Jane is horrified by the news, but Dan has his doubts since Amy is apparently known for telling wild stories, and he’s also had to help bail her out on several occasions with her hair salon business. Amy does herself no favors when she posts something on social media about her ordeal that some interpret as a cheap ploy to draw customers to her (apparently) failing business. But Dan continues to make Amy unwelcome and Jane has to convince her to stay, for daughter Sophie if nothing else as she is about to have her first dance recital.

Amy is contacted by the local paper for an interview, and when reporter Tim Cook shows up (no, the guy from Apple) he is more belligerent than neutral as a reporter is supposed to be, throwing more accusations at her than asking questions. Amy storms off and files a complaint with the paper, but then learns there is no reporter at the paper named Tim Cook. Amy then believes the guy is her captor, now stalking her to try and kidnap her again. The fact that he said something exactly as she remembers the unknown assailant saying only solidifies her belief that he is the man. While Amy and Tim were arguing, a good Samaritan came to her defense and shooed Tim away, and the two went for coffee so she could decompress. Amy tells her story and the guy, Paul, gives her a lot of sympathy and Amy starts to feel that maybe she can begin trusting people after all. But someone keeps terrorizing Amy, at her salon and at her sister’s house. When Jane has to leave town for business (and Dan has to go … somewhere) they leave Amy in charge of Sophie, and Amy is comfortable enough with Paul now to invite him for dinner. It’s a very late dinner as Sophie is already in bed asleep, but Amy gets another visitor before Paul arrives as someone begins knocking on the front door — but no one is there — then at the back door, which is unlocked. Amy calls Paul, who is running late, but he tells her to lock the door and check on Sophie … and the girl is gone. But she’s not, she just went to potty. Paul finally arrives, and Amy is certain Tim Cook is to blame for the terror in the night. When Jane and Dan return home the next day, Jane is not too thrilled that a strange man is dancing with her daughter in the living room, but Amy explains what happened and that he stayed over to keep her company. But now the police must take her seriously and go after Tim.

They do, but they have to let him go due to a lack of evidence. Tim even confronts Amy at the salon for putting up wanted flyers all over town with a crudely drawn picture of his face (courtesy of Jane who is suddenly a composite drawing artist but it looks more like Sophie drew it) — which the police sternly advise her to take down — and tells her he was out of town the night before but she doesn’t believe him. She flees out the back door to the alley where Paul has just parked to pick her up. He goes in to the salon, confronts Tim, and assures Amy he won’t be bothering her anymore. Did he kill Tim? But before Amy can get a grip on what is happening, Paul physically assaults her, ties her up and tosses her in his trunk. Turns out she should not have been so trusting and poor Tim Cook got the brunt of her mistake. Amy ends up handcuffed to a banister in some cabin in the middle of nowhere (she was tied the first time but slipped out of the ropes), and Jane is concerned that Amy is not answering her phone, especially as the dance recital is fast approaching. She decides to go to the salon where she finds … nothing but Amy’s phone and the door unlocked. She runs into Tim who is all beat up and he tells her it was Paul but he has no idea where Amy is. The only thing Jane seems to know is that Amy claimed to have been taken to Kentucky the first time so she makes the decision to drive from Georgia and contact the police there. She asks Tim to go with her since he knows what is going on but he says he can’t … until he can the next day and Dan is fine staying home with Sophie. Sure Jane, drive to Kentucky with this handsome stranger. What could go wrong?

Lifetime

They get to Kentucky and the police immediately form a search party to walk through the woods, even late into the night when most search parties suspend their actions until daylight. Jane finds a trash bag and freaks out thinking it’s Amy’s body stuffed inside and Tim consoles her. Apparently it was just trash, although we’re left to our imagination on that. The next day Jane and Tim stop to get coffee and while Jane is waiting she sees Paul coming out of another store with supplies while she is on the phone with Dan. Tim gets back to the car and the door is open but Jane is nowhere to be found … because she somehow managed to hop into the back of Paul’s pickup and cover herself with a tarp (how she did this without him seeing her is also left to the imagination), so she gets a free ride back to the cabin. What she doesn’t know is by this time, Amy has begun to trust Paul again after he reveals it wasn’t he who kidnapped her the first time, it was another guy who has now pressed him into service after kidnapping his son … but with no reason as to why he wants Amy so badly. The two actually begin to develop feelings for each other — Amy clearly has Stockholm Syndrome now — and he even allows her to roam freely around the cabin after pointing to the trees outside and telling her there are security cameras all over the place. There don’t seem to be any but she believes him and assures him that she will not try to escape. Jane gets into the house and tries to rescue her sister, but Amy tells her she can’t leave because Paul is a good guy and there are cameras all over and if she leaves the kidnapper, Adam, will hurt Paul’s son. Paul shows up and threatens Jane so she runs away through the woods until she gets to the road. Tim had already gone to the police and told them about her being missing, and she reaches the road just as Tim and the police are approaching. Now Jane can lead them back to the cabin. As the town’s force gets there, Paul and Amy flee out the back and take off through the woods with no one but Jane in pursuit. And when they get to the same cliff Amy allegedly jumped from the first time, Paul tells her it is their only escape (and for some reason the water below looks less rocky than before). Jane tries to reason with Amy and Paul is pleading with her to jump, but he slips and nearly pulls Amy with him but she manages to hang on long enough to give us a terrible green screen shot of Paul dangling above the raging river, but she can’t hold on to Pual … who she now believes is really Adam … and he falls to his death(?). By the way, Tim also managed to catch up to Jane, Amy and Paul but there is nary a cop in sight. Days, weeks, or months later — some time after the dance recital — things are good, Jane tells Amy that Tim is fine and will be coming for a haircut soon, Amy wears a bracelet made from the rope she was bound with, and all is right with the world. The end.

There have been a lot of reactions to this movie since it aired with people calling the ‘true story’ unbelievable. What people seem to miss is that these Lifetime movies always say ‘based on actual events’ plural, the writers picking and choosing from multiple true stories to create an entirely fictional story for dramatic purposes. So, to be clear, there is nothing about this story that is factual as a whole. That being said, sometimes cobbling together a story and trying to create a logical structure can be challenging, and the writer of the movie (Ian Lawlor, from a story by Richard Lister) didn’t seem to have a good grasp on the story or the characters. I’m beginning to believe more and more that some of these writers are using AI programs like ChatGPT to ‘write’ their scripts because they often end up with gaps in logic, such as why does Amy believe Tim is the kidnapper but never thinks twice about Paul? Poor Amy is written as a complete victim who never has the ability to stand up for herself. Perhaps it’s the trauma from her first abduction but instead of instantly trusting the first — well, second — man who comes along, all of her walls should have been up. The Dan role is also a throwaway character wasted on actor John Castle. Too many things also go unexplained, like how Jane got in the back of Paul’s pickup undetected, and why he let her run off into the woods after she tried to rescue Amy. And what search party continues after the sun goes down in pitch blackness except for a few flashlights? Too much of this feels manufactured rather than crafted by a seasoned writer. The film is adequately handled by director Dave Thomas, but it’s just as ridiculous as his last outing, Secrets to Kill For. It does commit the biggest sin for a thriller and that is it is boring instead of thrilling, mainly because you can sense what is coming long before the characters do, so the whole thing tries your patience.

The cast does their best with the material (and direction) they’ve been given. Meghan Carrasquillo got to play a much stronger woman in I Am Your Biggest Fan, but her character here is a mess. Why does Dan think she’s full of crap all the time? Is she a liar, is she just irresponsible? How does she operate a business? And how long had she been gone that her sister never bothered to file a missing persons report? Carrasquillo’s talent is evident in portraying Amy’s various states of mind, but she is fighting an uphill battle against the script. William McKinney actually does a good job with Paul, really making him appear sympathetic although even Helen Keller could have guessed he was the original kidnapper. He also is really convincing when he tells his story about his son to lull Amy more into his web of deceit, but again, the script lets him down because he can’t ever give her anything more than vagaries about his son or the person who is controlling him. There is also a bizarre moment when he allows Amy to sleep on a dirty old mattress and he is laying with her before getting up and sitting in a chair under interrogation-style lighting. Suddenly he’s without a shirt and crawling back into bed with her, they begin making out and … it was all a fantasy, though not clear if it was hers or his. But he’s also good when Paul becomes unhinged as it seems he will lose Amy once again, so overall a pretty decent performance. Jessica Morris at least makes Jane a bit more sympathetic and supportive of her sister, but she also has to do irrational things thanks to the writing. She can probably do much better with better material. As mentioned earlier, John Castle is wasted and has made a bigger impression in other Lifetime movies. Ellie Rose Sawyer is great as Sophie, her first credited work according to IMDb. And Daniel Di Amante manages to pull off a good performance as Tim Cook, although his scene as the alleged reporter (it’s later revealed a real reporter friend at the paper let him go on the interview to help establish himself … and then he screws it all up with his hostile attitude) is a bit over-the-top, but again, it’s how the part was written and directed. He becomes a much more relatable character after Paul beats the crap out of him, but he’s not really given any motivation for wanting to help Jane find Amy (any logical screenplay would have sent Jane and her husband on the road trip but then there would have to be an explanation as to who was watching Sophie while they were gone, and this movie has no time for explanations). But Di Amante succeeds in putting the audience firmly on his side because he is obviously wrongly accused.

And there you have it. No One Believed Me is going to have a hard time getting viewers to believe an actual person wrote the script as they roll their eyes at all of the story nonsense. At least the performers do what they can to elevate the material and direction, but this is one that will test your patience … if you can stay awake long enough to make it to the end.

No One Believed Me has a run time of 1 hour 28 minutes, and is rated TV-14.