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LMN’s newest ‘Hateful and Grateful” mystery-thriller kicks things into high gear with a really well-scripted story — co-written by the top-billed star — that offers two surprising twists and a great stable of talent on screen to tell the story, and off-screen to make everything come to life. Is it perfect? Well, there are a couple of plot holes that leave us with more questions than answers but they’re not as major as one would expect. Be warned, there may be some spoilers ahead if you have not yet seen the movie.
When Relative Danger begins, it almost feels like there are two different movies playing out. At first, a young girl named Alice is home alone waiting for her mother to arrive, but she hears a noise and fears someone is in the house. She can’t reach her mom at first, but she does call Alice back and panics when she hears Alice scream. What she doesn’t know is that there is a person in the house, but it’s just her sister, Alice’s aunt, playing a prank on Alice. What Alice doesn’t know is at the same moment a car has plowed into her mother while she was crossing the parking lot of a gas station, the hoodied driver — it’s not an LMN movie unless someone is wearing that black hoodie (do they use the same one for every movie?) — approaching and snatching the necklace from the victim’s neck. Then we’re in a completely different setting with a man who seems very morose and when he falls asleep he starts jabbering about someone named Chloe. You begin to wonder how the two scenes are related. Alice and her aunt Angie get the news about mom Sydney and head to the hospital, and it’s not long before the matriarch of the family, Louise, shows up and it’s clear there are some issues between her and Angie. Angie goes back to the house to collect some things for Alice so she can spend the night with her grandmother, and she notices a notepad in Sydney’s room with the name Jordan written on it and the time of 7:00. Not sure what this means, she returns to the hospital and after Alice and Louise leave, Angie talks to Simon, a fellow nurse with Sydney who lets slip that he was covering for Sydney that night when everyone thought she was at work. Angie demands he tell her why her sister was not at work because this is information the police may need, and Simon reveals that Sydney went to meet up with … Alice’s father, whom Angie and Alice believed to be dead. And his name is — Jordan. Angie is shocked and angry at this point and goes to her mother’s house to confront her, certain she’s known all along that Jordan was alive. She does, but she insists that Jordan is an alcoholic and a thief and she was only protecting Alice by hiding him from her. Angie ain’t buying it. That man we saw earlier is, of course, Jordan and it turns out he only found out a year earlier that Alice existed and he wants to be a part of her life.
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It’s not going to be that simple though because Jordan’s friend Billie, who has been looking in on his mother, tells him that she’s in bad shape and he really needs to take care of her. So Jordan’s mom Marissa shows up on his doorstep, but she seems to be in good health so it’s unclear at this point what her issue is. For his part, Jordan did go to the hospital but did not go into Sydney’s room. At grandma’s house, Alice overhears Angie and Louise talking about her father and learns that he works at an auto body shop nearby so she sneaks out to meet him. When she first sees him at work, he had just burned his hand on a radiator and threw a tool at the wall in anger, which frightened Alice, but before she could run off he exits the shop and sees her and knows immediately who she is. He pleads with her to not run away and that he isn’t going to hurt her. In fact, he has something for her — a notebook full of letters he’s written to her every day for the last year since he found out about her. This does not seem to be the work of a criminal. Jordan later pays a visit to Louise and she attempts to buy his silence and absence, which Angie happens to overhear, making her even more suspicious of Louise’s claims about Jordan. Alice even showed Angie the letters, further convincing her that there is more to the story than Louise is willing to tell her. As Angie is trying to put the puzzle pieces together, news comes that Sydney is beginning to wake up from her coma, and as Louise is getting the call, that hoodied figure sneaks up on her with a crowbar but Angie shows up just in time, scaring the perpetrator away. Angie had left Alice in the car and before she can get back to her, she sees the car driving away. Things only get worse for Jordan after Alice goes missing, and everyone believes he had something to do with it — everyone but Angie — and he’s brought into the police station for questioning, finally released but placed under house arrest with an ankle monitor. It’s not long after that it’s revealed who took Alice — Jordan’s mother. It is also clear now that her issue is her breaks with reality that have plagued her since her daughter, Chloe, died when she was hit by a car as a child while she was supposed to be under the watchful eye of her slightly older brother. Marissa somehow saw Alice and immediately thought she looked like, or was, Chloe and now she just wants to keep her safe and away from everyone else. Unfortunately for Billie, she is Jordan’s alibi for the night Alice disappeared and Marissa knows this, so she goes to her house and tries to force Billie to write a ‘confession’ that she knows Jordan took Alice. Billie refuses but Marissa isn’t playing, so if she won’t cooperate then she’ll just take a permanent nap. Angie calls Jordan to tell him Alice is missing but he can’t go anywhere because of the monitor. Angie goes to his house anyway, and he realizes that his mother has Alice and the best way to get the police involved is to just go to the house where he grew up and where Chloe died, setting off the ankle monitor in the process, suspecting that is where Marissa is holding the girl. Jordan didn’t know his mother still owned the house, but they see her inside … and there is a gun on the table. Jordan lures Marissa out of the house to give Angie time to slip in, find Alice and get her out. Marissa chases Jordan through the snowy wooded area but they all converge back in the driveway, Marissa waving her gun at everyone but she gets the upper hand and snatches Alice back. Jordan had revealed to Angie that the accident that killed Chloe wasn’t by some random driver, it was Marissa, who was unable to stop in time when her daughter ran in front of the car. Angie tries to use some reverse psychology on Marissa by seeming to throw Jordan under the bus, and Alice picks up on the ruse to the point that Marissa seems to believe that they are willing to let her keep Alice. It’s enough for her to let her guard down and they manage to get the gun from her just as the police arrive. With these big reveals about Marissa, and Sydney recovering, it seems to vindicate Jordan to the point that Angie, Sydney, Alice … and Louise (!) throw him a birthday party. All is forgiven. Poor Marissa will spend the rest of her days in a padded room, it seems, her ending much more bleak than her son’s.
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Relative Danger is a pretty taut mystery-thriller with a terrific story that never talks down to the audience and keeps its mysteries very close to the vest. I honestly thought Billie — a perfectly crafted red herring — was the culprit because she seemed to have some feelings for Jordan that were not being reciprocated, so what better way to win him over than take out the woman he may have once loved — or still loves — and bring him the daughter he only recently found out about? It was a genuine shock when it turned out to be Marissa, and it was even more shocking when it was revealed that she was the driver who killed accidentally Chloe. But it all made perfect sense, even if there are some minor plot holes. Like, for a woman of her age, Marissa has quite the stamina. Does she really have the upper body strength to lift that crowbar high enough to whack the taller Louise in the head? And how exactly did she get to Louise’s house? She was apparently on foot since she drove off in Angie’s car and there was no other car around. And how did Jordan’s DNA get in Angie’s car for the police to make him the prime suspect? Was Marissa wearing his black hoodie? These are questions that would normally bug me, but the story packed in so many surprises that they were easy enough to overlook. Kirsten Comerford, who plays Angie, co-wrote the script with Roxanne Boisvert, and it truly is one of the better things to appear on LMN. It really holds your attention and keeps you guessing. Boisvert also directs and really keeps the piece moving, using some nice camera movements and angles to keep you invested in the story and characters (I particularly loved the shot of Marissa sitting with Alice, and then she stands up and looms over the scene as the camera remains in place, making Marissa seem like a giant). While the production is top notch, it requires a great suspension of disbelief to accept that the story is taking place in Philadelphia with the mountains of snow all over the place. But that’s a minor quibble when the product turns out so well.
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The cast is also terrific. Comerford just nails Angie and her complex relationship with Louise. Her Angie isn’t one to just believe what someone tells her without backing up those claims with some cold hard facts, and Comerford gives Angie that strength to stand up to defend a man she barely knows and go toe-to-toe with Louise, then willing to put herself in harm’s way to save Alice. Comerford has been in several LMN/Lifetime movies but this is easily one of her best, if not the best, of her performances (perhaps because she could portray a character she helped write). Laura Provenzano, another Lifetime/LMN regular, is also terrific as Alice, dealing with all the emotions of learning she’s been lied to for sixteen years, wanting to get to know her father while her grandmother continues to try to sway her away with lies about him. And once she’s abducted, she never plays Alice as a victim. It’s a really solid performance. Jayne Heitmeyer is also excellent as Louise, using her expressive face to constantly convey her utter disdain for Jordan whenever anyone brings him up. She is scheming and nefarious, but she is fiercely protective of her family. It’s not clear, however, if she truly believes Jordan is a bad guy or if she’s just using the accusations to turn Alice away from him. It’s also unclear if she is doing this because she believes he ditched Sydney, but he tells Billie that Sydney dumped him. Louise’s feelings toward Jordan may be based on pure misinformation or misunderstanding, which sort of explains why she’s actually welcoming him to the party at the end. But if we don’t know, then Heitmeyer may not have known either if she was kept in the dark about the film’s climax, which is entirely possible, and that just makes her performance totally authentic. She makes Louise totally hate Jordan, and it feels real.
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Dennis Andres does a great job as Jordan, really making it feel like he’s carrying this burden on his shoulders about his sister, but also is clearly not the man Louise has been telling everyone he is. Andres actually shows Jordan as a kind and compassionate man who wants nothing more in the world than to connect with the daughter he never knew. He’s in an extraordinary situation, sort of like a Hitchcockian character in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught up in something that only he can get himself out of. He just totally brings Jordan to authentic life. Debra Hale is also excellent as Marissa, needing to maintain a sense of normalcy through most of the movie so as not to give anything away, and doing that with great expertise, making those reveals all the more jaw-dropping. And even when she finally goes off the deep end in the final moments, she still manages to make the audience have some sympathy for her, as she was also carrying around as much guilt as Jordan. Really great performances. The supporting cast — JaNae Armogan, Niki Kerro, Dale Samms, Samantha Brown — also does some great work. Everyone just works together to tell the story in the best way possible, and they succeed.
Even with some of the unanswered questions the movie poses, Relative Danger is a thrilling mystery, full of suspense and surprises that make for a really enjoyable watch.
Relative Danger has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.