Lifetime
Lifetime’s newest thriller has an unsavory and unsettling storyline made all the more skin-crawling with a twist that spins the whole movie on its head.
Sins of My Husband begins with a married couple, Tony and Katherine Dandridge, and its obvious that something is off in their relationship, particularly when Katherine mentions that God has not seen fit to bless them with a child, and Tony is just creepy, insisting that his wife’s job after she suggests selling her homemade pies at a local shop is to take care of the house and him. As they ‘enjoy’ dinner, Tony gets an alert that an alarm at one of the properties he’s selling has been tripped so he must go check it out. Where he actually ends up is at an underground bunker where he’s holding a young girl captive and because of her attempts to escape he’s cutting off the oxygen and will be taking her to the ‘ladies in the lake’ after she suffocates. The girl, Suzie, isn’t the first girl to go missing and her parents, Doreen and Louis, have been trying to help the police find some connection between the girls. Meeting some new neighbors, including a teen girl, while handing out flyers they realize they bought their house from the same realtor — Tony Dandridge — and have discovered that Dandridge was the realtor for the other homes as well, which explains why there was no forced entry — he had keys and the new owners didn’t change the locks. When Tony comes back for Suzie, she isn’t as dead as he expected and she gets the upper hand, racing out of the shelter and right into a police barricade. Tony finds himself in the headlights and begins to reach into his jacket pocket but the police shoot him dead before he can draw a weapon (and it’s not clear if he did have a weapon).
Suzie is returned to her parents, but the other girls are dead, those ‘ladies in the lake’ Tony mentioned. It seems like the ordeal is over but it is far from ended. Suzie is having issues readjusting, and Tony’s wife is finding herself ostracized by the townspeople, most of whom believe she knew what her husband was doing even though she is adamant that she didn’t. After threats and vandalism at her home, Doreen makes an effort to show her some kindness but that only results in her also being harassed, and the police officer in charge of the case, Detective Harrison, is being less than helpful, instead of issuing a statement that Katherine has not been charged with anything he tells her that maybe she should just get out of town. Things come to a head when Katherine fears someone is in her house and she calls the only person she can trust, Doreen, who arrives to offer some comfort and protection. But secrets are revealed and neither of them may be as innocent as they claim.
Lifetime
Sins of My Husband is an interesting twist on the creepy abduction story because instead of making Tony the prominent character all through the movie, he’s dispatched rather quickly. The movie then isn’t as much about the abductions and serial killing — which are still major storylines — but it becomes about the victimization of his wife who, for all anyone really knows, had no knowledge of her husband’s actions (despite the people of the town believing she did, needing an outlet for their anger). The story, by Rolfe Kanefsky, does a great job of garnering sympathy for Katherine, who now seems like just another of her husband’s victims. The script also builds a believable relationship between Katherine and Doreen, making it all the more shocking when the secrets of both women are revealed (and at that point we as an audience aren’t really sure who we should root for). While the story itself is unsettling, the one really unsavory piece of the story is how contemptuously the detective is written, completely without compassion, treating Katherine as badly as he would have Tony, if he’d survived, and without any evidence of wrong-doing on her part. Detective Harrison is not upholding his sworn duty to serve and protect and that part might leave a bad taste in the viewers mouths. The film’s climax is constructed pretty well as it lays out how Katherine is being set up. All in all, it’s pretty clever with a nice payoff.
The main cast all do excellent work. Alaina Huffman (Riverdale fans will remember her as Twyla Twist) is perfect as the concerned mother, at her wits end trying to find her daughter, but also becoming quite compassionate with Katherine, even (apparently) standing up to her friend Brenda, who has nothing but loathing for Katherine. Michael Antonakos is also good as Louis, the concerned father who is trying to hold his family together. Matt Brown is appropriately creepy as Tony, but we never get to see him in another light so we don’t know how that relationship with Katherine works. He seems to just be an oppressor at all times, but because he does such a good job at being slimy, we root for his demise. Juliette Hawk is also very good as Suzie, keeping her wits about her when her situation becomes dire, and portraying a real teenager who’s been through some trauma but is still feeling oppressed by her parents who have become even more overly protective of her. Hayley Sales is excellent as Katherine, effectively conveying the character’s sadness in her marriage, completely earning our empathy and sympathy as she is berated and victimized by the locals. The 180 she makes late in the film is convincing and a testament to her acting skills because it almost comes out of nowhere (although there are little hints in her performance that all is not as it seems with Katherine). Dalias Blake gives a fine performance as Detective Harrison, but he’s just saddled with a character who is almost as unlikable as Tony.
Director Soran Mardookhi manages to keep the story’s secrets locked away throughout the run time of the film, never really giving too much away that something is amiss (although one lingering ‘what’s going on here’ shot of Katherine wiping the table with a piece of what looks to be a flannel shirt is a bit too obvious). He elicits some terrific performances from the cast, and really builds on the mystery, making great use of the editing to reveal the climactic moment, sort of like an Agatha Christie mystery. Overall, Sins of My Husband is an effective thriller, one of Lifetime’s better presentations.
Sins of My Husband has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
I would like to add that I’m still not sure that Catherine knew everything her husband was doing I still don’t understand that partner with somebody could explain it to me