Lifetime
Kirsten Comerford is making me a believer that any movie she’s in is more than likely going to be a good one (we’ll excuse Playing with Fire). Her recent LMN movie, Relative Danger, was really impressive with its mystery and twists, and her newest, The Body in the Locker, doesn’t quite live up to that one — the twist is pretty easily solved even though the movie works hard to steer you in other directions — it’s still entertaining and fun to try to guess where it’s going.
The Body in the Locker (the most honest title yet from Lifetime), centers around the Leigh family, specifically Amy Robertson, whose father Reginald has recently passed away. With his passing, Amy is now the head of his charitable foundation but she has a lot to deal with including writing a eulogy for his upcoming memorial service. At the same time, her husband James seems to be climbing the ladder at work perhaps because he’s married into the family business. He’s preparing for an interview for a promotion, but his co-worker Peter, also in line for an interview, just can’t stop ribbing the guy over the perceived nepotism and assumes James has the job locked up. Amy’s mom Claire, though long-separated from Reginald, tries to offer support but often comes off a very controlling. To honor her dad, Amy decides to set up a charitable auction of some of his belongings but when she goes to his house there is someone else there. While trying to put on a brave face to confront the intruder, she is instead pushed aside by someone dressed in black holding a black jacket over their head. Note — not a black hoodie (probably one of the biggest surprises in the movie). As they bump into each other, the thief drops an old jewelry box, and Amy retrieves the contents: a key to a storage locker and a USB flash drive. There’s also a note inside that confirms this was Reginald’s items. Amy tracks the key to a storage facility, Boxed In, and has to deal with a really snippy employee, Lisa, who keeps making snide remarks about Amy being a ‘princess’, but she never reveals why she is so hostile to this woman who just wants to know where her father’s storage unit is. Amy finally finds it and while inside she sees a wardrobe with that looks to be a corner of something plastic sticking out from the door. Yep, inside that plastic is the titular body, a woman that Amy does not know. Forensics and an autopsy determine that the body has been dead for three years, but Reginald had not been to the unit in five years, so who put the body there and who is the unidentified murder victim? Well, we can assume it is the woman seen in the three years earlier prologue, rehearsing some sort of speech for whomever it is that is about to pay her a visit. The screams after the door closes indicates the meeting did not go as planned.
Lifetime
Amy and Claire make a decision to keep this all hush-hush until the police sort everything out, not wanting to harm Reginald’s reputation unnecessarily, nor do harm to the foundation. But things aren’t adding up for Amy. While at the office, Claire pops in and sees a new intern, Maisie, and immediately tells Amy to get rid of her because she doesn’t trust her. The poor girl just moved to town and has only been working a few days. Claire doesn’t even know her so why is she so hot to can the girl? There is also a reporter sniffing around, trying to entrap people into spilling all the tea, but it turns out she’s not even working for the paper she claims to be working for — she and a bunch of others had recently been fired for being ‘redundant’ so now she’s just trying to make a name for herself (Substack, girl). James is also acting weird, dropping by the storage facility the same night it just happened to be set ablaze, implicating both him — especially with the smell of gasoline on his shirt cuff — and Lisa, just because of her attitude. Amy soon discovers the truth about the dead woman — her father was having an affair with her many years ago. Claire knew but she kept it from Amy so as not to tarnish the perception she had of her father. With everything piling on, Amy begins to bond with Maisie and she tells her the truth about her father and the dead woman, then Maisie disappears and Amy goes to her house to see if she’s okay, but is chased down by the reporter who only wants to get to the bottom of the woman’s murder. But the reporter has publicly let the cat out of the bag about the affair and Reginald’s possible involvement in the murder, so Amy no longer knows who to trust. But she still need to find Maisie and decides to see if she’s at the storage unit, and there comes a convergence of characters including Maisie, James, Lisa and Claire. So whodunit?
The Body in the Locker has a really intriguing story that nicely sets up the murder, the discovery of the body, and presents compelling arguments for almost any of the main characters to be the murderer (even if the details of how the body got into the locker are a bit hazy). Director Sean Cisterna does a great job of building up the tension and making all of he red herrings plausible culprits instead of obvious distractions, but if you pay close enough attention just the behavior of one of the suspects will immediately make you guess it was they who committed the murder and stashed the body. The one person you can be sure it isn’t is Amy (well, and Reginald since he’s also dead). There’s also a nice twist involving Maisie that I guessed just before it was revealed that also has an impact on whoever the killer is. Once all is said and done, the movie even ends with a nice bonding moment for Amy and one of the other players as she is finally able to unlock the mysterious USB drive to find Reginald revealing the truth about his relationship to … well, we’re not going to give this one away. All in all, this was a gripping, never-a-dull-moment mystery-thriller.
Lifetime
Kirsten Comerford again does an excellent job as Amy. This character has so much dumped on her at one time, and Comerford has to keep Amy balanced and sensible without becoming hysterical as she no longer knows who she can trust. Things get so bad she even kicks James out of the house when she isn’t sure if he spilled his guts to the reporter. Comerford just keeps her emotions on an even keel so that Amy can remain relatable to the audience. After appearing as Comerford’s mother in Relative Danger, Jayne Heitmeyer joins her again as … her mother, Claire. In the previous movie, she rarely had a nice word for the man who turns out to be the father of her granddaughter. Here she has to play more sympathetic with Amy, but not shy to toss off a biting line of dialog in reference to someone like Maisie. She has to balance making the viewer believe she’s on the up-and-up while also trying to make us think she may possibly be involved in the murder. Heitmeyer gives a nicely balanced performance. Chris Hong is also good as James, leaving you guessing as to his connection to the murder. Sometimes he seems fine and supportive of Amy, and other times he’s keeping everything close to the vest, obviously hiding something but trying his hardest to not let it affect his career opportunity or his marriage. He also seems to be the only person who could have lugged a dead body into a storage facility. But is this all a ruse of the writer?
Tori Barban is excellent as Maisie. She brings exuberance to her job, she gushes on and on about the foundation and how she wished she would have joined sooner so she could have met Reginald … which is a major red flag, or is she just that happy about the work? She brings a real sweetness to the role, but some pain as well because, like Amy, she is also trying to solve the murder which is even more deeply personal for her than it is for Amy. Barban really allows the audience to feel for Maisie. Briauna James has a tricky role in Lisa, the storage facility attendant. She has moments of being nice, but most of her encounters with Amy turn to hostility for unknown reasons. It isn’t until the end when she reveals why she’s made such derogatory comments about Amy, Reginald and the foundation that her demeanor makes sense. She does a nice job of spewing out something harsh then quickly trying to pull it back, but it’s nice that we finally get to know what her issue is (and there is even a nice payoff for her). Robert Notman plays the perfect office jerk toward James, relishing in the digs he gets to take but even he gets to have a moment of humanity as he offers an ear if James needs to talk about his marriage falling apart (which is just an assumption on Peter’s part). Sasha Barry is also good as reporter Georgia, trying to be all tough with people to get them to slip up, but also showing concern after Maisie goes missing, revealing what she knows so far to Amy in the hope that they can work together to find the girl before something bad happens to her. Dale Samms also does a nice job as Detective Clark, always considerate of the situation, never playing the role as condescending even when several people keep getting in the way of his investigation. Interestingly, John Koensgen was just seen on Hallmark in Melt My Heart This Christmas playing a very serious businessman. Here, he gets to have a truly emotional moment at the end of the movie as Amy watches the video he recorded before his death explaining everything (except the murder because he probably didn’t know about that).
Overall, The Body in the Locker builds a really decent mystery that works hard to keep you guessing, and fills out the cast with some really outstanding actors giving performances that make you root for and look sideways at, no one ever really giving up the game too early. Kudos to everyone for a job well done.
The Body in the Locker has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.