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LMN’s nonsensically themed ‘Wicked Revenge’ month continues with an odd abduction thriller with a title that makes you think it somehow involves food, Sinister Secret Ingredient.
THe movie stars Sabrina Miller and Gwen Mowdy as mother and daughter Mel and Abby, new-ish arrivals in what Abby describes as a ‘sleepy little town’ — and we all know those sleepy little towns are where the worst crimes are committed in these TV movies — in Oklahoma (I don’t recall any of these movies using Oklahoma as a location, but I could be wrong) where Mel has opened a dentistry practice and somehow has a wall with hundreds of file folders on display. It is when we see her with her one patient that her superpower is revealed — she has a hyper-sensitive sense of smell. When the patient makes a comment about being dizzy, she smells his breath and determines he is having a reaction to the fillings because he has undisclosed diabetes. She quickly gets the EMTs on site and they take care of him, but whew, that was a close one. Or not. But because Mel is sooooooo busy, she forgets that Abby is waiting for her in the office, and now Mel has to finish some paperwork about the patient before she can take Abby home, so Abby decides to walk, leaving the office with a huge backpack on her back and books in her arms, but they magically disappear when she walks out the door so all she has is her phone (and she’s wearing headphones). Could she have already made it home, put down her stuff and went back out? Perhaps, but there is no indication of this and … by the time Mel gets home it’s pitch dark!
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Before we even get to all of that, the story begins with two girls apparently being held hostage by an older woman and when one of them gets a bit mouthy, well, it doesn’t seem to go well for her. Then at a community meeting, parents are asking for help in finding their daughter, but after the meeting some of the neighbors see the woman and her husband having an argument but none of them seem to have any sympathy for her. So back to Abby and Mel, when Mel finally gets home from her office with carry out for dinner, Abby is already eating a plate of food prepared by … the lady with the girls in her basement. Uh oh, could this dinner contain the Sinister Secret Ingredient? She serves Mel a plate as well, and even though Mel is taken aback that Abby would allow a stranger into their house — with food that could be tainted, no less — she accepts the meal and asks the woman, Ruth, to join them. This turns into a nightly occurrence as Mel comes home every night with food, and Abby is already eating. So we know the food isn’t tainted. Ruth worms her way into the family and then invites Mel to attend the community meeting, which she does. We have no sense of how much time has passed since the last meeting, but the woman from the first one is there, now single after her husband divorced her and married someone else, and she is asking for the community’s support in setting up a small organization named for her still missing daughter, Oakley, to which half of the neighbors oppose — including Ruth — and half approve (while others abstained from voting). Mel is shocked that her neighbors don’t seem to care about helping find a missing child and makes an impassioned plea explaining that neighbors helping neighbors is exactly why she chose to move there with her daughter. The speech works and the vote goes in favor of Janine, and Mel made such an impression that Barb put her up for the position of Administrator in the upcoming election. Mel is flattered and asks who the current Administrator is … and it’s Ruth, so she quickly turns down the offer as she is hit by the daggers coming from Ruth’s eyes. The other ladies laugh and tell Mel to avoid the brownies — which Ruth made — because she changed the recipe and they are dry. A day or two later, Mel sees Barb by her car which has been vandalized and she doesn’t seem to put two-and-two together, or maybe she does with her comment about karma, seeming to find the situation humorous.
So, to condense the rest of the plot, after Abby has a bit of a freak out about living in this new town and not being able to find a necklace her father gave her, things change a day or so later (there is no concept of time here). Mel comes home, can’t find Abby, but does find a note printed out (not being handwritten should have registered as suspicious) that she’s had it with this place and she’s going to live with her father. Mind you, she has not talked to her father in at least six months, and father seems like a real prize, in a sarcastic way, bitching at Mel by phone over child support that he only agreed to pay if he had visitation rights … and he never came to visit for the four months before they moved, so Mel finds it hard to believe Abby would try to make her way to him far, far away. That thought is made even more certain when Mel calls him and he says he’s not talked to Abby and he and his wife don’t even have a spare room for her so he absolutely did not invite her to live with him. So now Mel finds herself in the same position as Janine, asking for the community’s help in finding her daughter. As she is worn out by the trauma and overwhelmed with all of her invisible patients, pharmacist Nick — with whom Mel seems to have a flirtatious relationship — is more than happy to be there to help. Meanwhile, Ruth has Abby and the other girl still in the basement, one ankle chained to the floor, teaching them all the basics of perfect etiquette while referring to both of the girls as Margaret. We learn that Ruth’s daughter, Margaret, drowned many years ago while swimming at the dam … with boys! … and now it seems Ruth is trying to groom one of her prisoners to be the perfect Margaret. The unknown girl is terrified of Ruth, because she has a tendency to beat the girls with her cane, and tries to get Abby to play along. Abby is not a team player and ends up locked in a trunk for hours, but she eventually puts on an act that she is going to do her best to learn her lessons. Mel is still distraught over Abby’s disappearance and while she’s laying on Abby’s bed she notices something on the nightstand (that didn’t seem to be there when she found the note days, weeks or months earlier). Taking a sniff, her superpowers kick in and she gets Nick to run some tests on it to see if what she smells is real … and he confirms that it is which proves that Abby did not run away — she was chloroformed and abducted, and now she gets to shove that in the face of the police who basically told her she was a suspect without telling her she was a suspect. It becomes clear to Mel that Ruth is somehow involved (that necklace comes into play), so while she knows Ruth is out of her house, Mel breaks in, snoops around and finds the door to the basement. Unfortunately, just as she opens it, Ruth appears and uses the same method to render Mel unconscious, and when she wakes up she is also chained to a bed. Abby tries to help but when Ruth appears she snaps into ‘Margaret mode’ to make Ruth think she is the perfect girl to take her daughter’s place, and then it also becomes clear the other girl is Oakley (the first girls was indeed murdered and her body was found some time later, which had made both Janine and Mel think it was their daughter until the identity was confirmed). Will Abby’s ruse throw Ruth off enough to save her and her mother? Will Oakley finally snap into action and help save them all? Will any of them survive?
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Sinister Secret Ingredient could have been a better thriller than it is, there were just a lot of not great choices made, there are weird continuity issues and zero indication of time passing except that one minute it’s broad daylight and the next it is pitch black (how far is Mel’s office from her house that Abby can get home before dark by walking, but Mel can’t by driving?). Mel’s ‘dad jokes’ are even worse than most dad jokes and Sabrina Miller delivers them awkwardly (which may have been the point so Abby could roll her eyes). The look chosen for Ruth was also questionable. I found her hairstyle distracting and her clothes ill-fitting, and that was all I could focus on when she was on screen. Director Tom Shell (who provided the voice for Mel’s ex) manages to keep this train rolling, despite the time issues, but it’s hard to tell if he gave the actors any guidance on how to play their roles or if he just let them run with it. Peter McLeod’s screenplay does a nice job of building Mel’s anxiety while showing Ruth’s behavior with her captives, but this is his second film in a row about kidnapped girls following The Little Girl Who Lived (both films also include a necklace as a plot device, here Mel realizes Ruth may have had something to do with Abby’s disappearance because she’s wearing the necklace Abby had been furiously searching for in her room, Ruth claiming it was a gift from Abby). McLeod also seems to be trying to build up Nick as a suspect — is he maybe working with Ruth, because his sincerity with Mel always feels insincere — but he’s just a goofy red herring who looks so much like Will Forte that it becomes another distraction. It is also questionable as to why the neighborhood does not want to support Janine’s organization to help find missing children. It’s not like she wants to start strip mining the town. She wants a little office space and volunteers. And why Mel didn’t put her foot down right from the start with Ruth is bad parenting. Tell the woman she is more than welcome to help out but at least give her some notice or ask permission first. And Abby’s freak out over her missing necklace also seems to come out of nowhere, as does her sudden dislike for their new hometown. Also, why does Abby never question why Ruth calls her and the other girl ‘Margaret’? It is a bit all over the place.
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I don’t have much to say about the acting. I don’t feel that Sabrina Miller ever really connected with her character, although she does really make her speech about helping Janine feel very passionate about the cause. Gwen Mowdy is fine as Abby and she does a good job at attempting to play along with Ruth while in captivity, but that freak out scene really does come out of nowhere. Ginger Gilmartin does do a very good job as Ruth, nicely balancing her grandmotherly behavior with Mel and Abby, while being a stern headmistress with her captive girls while forcing them to call her ‘Mother’. She is quite chilling but her final lines are weird, suddenly having some kind of disconnect from reality. Justin Ross Martin plays Nick with such a hint of shadiness that you may really think he is connected to Ruth somehow, and the script never really gives us a definitive clue as to what his and Mel’s relationship really is, although there is one moment where he puts his hand on her back gently — which Janine sees — that makes it look like more than just a friendly gesture.
Betsy Hume is fine as Janine, but the way she comes out of nowhere to hug Mel from behind after swaying the group with her speech was uncalled for. No one in real life would ever do something like that. Personal space, lady! Kinlee Michelle Williams is very good as Oakley, always showing the girl’s utter terror bubbling under the surface, the one girl who has survived so far (we have no idea how many others Ruth has abducted besides the one other girl at the beginning), doing what she can to keep Abby in line so they don’t both regret it. Lorrie Chilcoat makes her character, Britney, the most realistic of them all. She knows how to conduct a meeting, she never overplays the role, and she was oddly my favorite character. One actor who has not benefited from the script was Danielle Ruffin as Ellen, one of the neighbors in the group. One minute she’s lovely and welcoming and appears to be the kind of person you would want as a neighbor, but she’s one of the first to turn on Janine. Ruffin plays both aspects of Ellen’s personality well, but the whole way her character changed left a bad taste in my mouth. The rest of the supporting cast does their jobs, some better than others, but no one is terrible.
In the end, Sinister Secret Ingredient is fine as a thriller, but you have to forgive a lot of it to make it worth a watch.
Sinister Secret Ingredient has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.