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LMN snuck in one additional ‘Slay Bells’ movie to end the month — for real this time — with a thriller that’s a bit less-than-thrilling, and a title (and mystery) that makes little sense until about the mid-way point, by which time you may have thrown your hands into the air in frustration … or perhaps just nodded off. One thing we will give the network credit for — this ‘Slay Bells’ movie does actually take place at Christmas … at least for the first fourteen minutes.
So what is The Child They Hid about? In one of the most awkwardly uncomfortable family Christmas dinners ever, daughter Marci ‘surprises’ her family members with DNA test kits so they can all learn a little about their heritage. Marci has actually discovered she has a previously unknown cousin named Helen living in New York City, apparently a Broadway actor who once almost filled in for Bernadette Peters (or something like that). Marci’s Uncle Walt and Aunt Bianca are all on board with doing the test but mom Caroline wants nothing to do with it, especially after Marci brings up Helen, which made the dinner even more tense, making it seem like she was the black sheep of the family that no one ever talked about. But Helen has agreed to come to Miami to meet Marci so she is excited even though no one else is. Except … following Helen’s Christmas party at her apartment, the good old Black Hoodie character shows up and attacks her so instead of Helen, Marci is visited by private investigator Nick who breaks the news to her while trying to piece together what led to the murder. On top of that, Marci’s boyfriend Tommy, a sound engineer for a band, has just informed her that he will not be home for the holidays as planned because the band just got a last minute booking in Dubai and then they are off on their scheduled gig to Australia. This puts doubts into Marci’s head about their relationship, and even though Tommy offers to pay for her flight to Australia, she’s having second thoughts about moving forward with him.
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While out with her friend Tamra one evening at a local bar (apparently the only bar in Miami), Marci is surprised to find Tommy working there. He’s quit the tour and has taken a temporary job there with no path forward for his career, but he just wants to prove to her that he’s serious about their relationship. Now Tommy has a degree, they live in Miami … he should certainly be able to find work in a local theatrical venue or arena. It’s not like they’re out in the Everglades! There’s also another new temp named Eugene, who says he’s in town for a few weeks for fun in the sun, but he seems to be someone his high school class would have voted ‘Least Likely to Have Fun in the Sun’ because of his attitude. With all of the characters established, P.I. Nick is stepping on the toes of the local police department with his investigation, and it’s not long before Uncle Walt meets his maker at the hands of Black Hoodie (he thought he was going to meet Helen as well, but Marci had to tell him she was in a coma when ‘she’ messaged him), which seems to prove the theory that everyone linked by the DNA tests are now targets. Ah, so now that title makes a little more sense. The child they hid is most likely the Black Hoodie killer. But why? That explanation is all the more convoluted when the now grown child holds Caroline hostage to lure Marci to them … and by the end it still doesn’t really make much sense.
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My personal reaction to this movie is about as blank as the majority of the performances. The script by Jelena Woehr, her first feature-length project (written with or enhanced by director Peter Foldy) gives the characters some pretty basic dialogue. The family dinner scene is especially painful, and the actors don’t help (Rosco Nash’s Uncle Walt is particularly over-the-top). The character of Marci is probably the most well-constructed of the bunch, while mom Caroline is just always in some kind of stupor and on medication. Marci explains this away to Tamra as her still being in shock over her husband’s death, but Tamra points out it’s been five years now to which Marci reminds her that everyone grieves differently. In reality, the family has coddled Caroline into an almost catatonic state. It seems that Woehr is also trying to work overtime to perhaps make us think that Tommy is somehow involved with the attacks since he was not in town when Helen was accosted, and then he was in town when Uncle Walt was killed … right after Tommy paid him a visit to have words about Walt and his family trying to keep him and Marci apart (that also seemed to come out of nowhere). Also, Black Hoodie has no reservations about attacking the family members in broad daylight out in the open, and all of the victims seem to recognize the killer. There is also a completely ludicrous scene with P.I. Nick digging through bar trash, pulling out a slice of pizza with one bite taken from it, and getting DNA results back from it to help pinpoint who the killer is. Now, don’t say I don’t do my research because I definitely had to find out if this was remotely possible and … it is, believe it or not. Cheese has a unique ability to preserve DNA in saliva (as do donuts, so be careful what you toss away). The more you know. Okay, but … how did Nick know that this piece of pizza was the one he was looking for? How does he know his suspect even took a bite of pizza? Eugene just brought the bag out to the dumpster and Nick snagged it the second he was out of sight, so was Nick also in the bar watching people eat? How did he know what he was looking for was in that bag of trash? And who was in the bar that night who could have taken a bite of pizza? We have no idea. (Maybe there was a cut scene with Marci, Tommy, Eugene, Tamra, Aunt Bianca and Cousin Steph all enjoying a pizza at the bar so that we could have at least played whodunit and not believed Nick had completely lost his mind while digging through the trash.) I’m curious to know if the script’s failures rest solely on Woehr, if Foldy did rewrites that made it more convoluted or if it was just beyond salvaging. Also, the title change for LMN’s broadcast does the movie no favors as it seems to have been marketed as The DNA Murders (or DNA Secrets), either of which were much better options because, technically, the ‘child’ of the title was never actually hidden, they had been abducted and never found, so the child was never spoken of out of respect for Caroline’s fragile emotional state. Yes, they hid the truth from Marci, but that really has no bearing on the plot. Speaking of the abduction, there is a flashback scene to the moment with a completely gratuitous shot of Caroline’s bloody dress right in the area of her hoo-ha — she is pregnant with Marci at this point — as she notices the other child has disappeared and wants to go searching for them while bleeding profusely. That also factors into the reason for the killings — the once missing child is apparently seeking revenge because they were ‘replaced’ by Marci. An episode of Maury could have probably resolved all the family issues without any bloodshed.
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As for the cast, this might not be the best movie to include on their CVs. Grace Patterson is fine as Marci, trying to infuse the dialogue with some emotion, but still coming across as expressionless throughout most of the movie. Joe Burns seems to have been directed to play Tommy a bit too overly-dedicated to repairing his relationship with Marci to the point that he also seems completely suspicious. He’s also given a bit of nonsense where Marci finds a second cell phone at his place which makes her think he’s cheating on her, and even his excuse does not sound sincere (the explanation for the phone should still give her pause as to what kind of person Tommy is). Rosco Nash as Uncle Walt seems to be in a different movie altogether in the way he delivers his lines. Suzanne R. Neff’s only character direction was to be mildly manic and always sullen and spaced out … which she does very well. Mary Skinner’s Aunt Bianca had some potential in the way she delivers her lines with a bit of snark (Nora Dunn vibes), but she’s very underutilized. Jonathan Stoddard does his best Sgt. Joe Friday impersonation (‘Just the facts, ma’am’), clenched jaw and squinty eyes always on full display, delivering his dialogue in a flat manner, doing his best to make the garbage digging scene not feel like it came out of a Naked Gun movie. Kate Szekely actually breathes some life into her scenes as pal Tamra, and she should have been present more with Marci to liven things up. Sam Harding brings sullen to a new level as Eugene.
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If you’ve watched enough of these LMN thrillers, most of them are so obvious that the viewer can, by the mid-way point at the most, figure out who the most likely suspect is. This one does not make it as obvious as it should seem in retrospect, perhaps because you spend the first half just trying to figure out who the hidden child is, and why the child was hidden, and then you realize the child was never hidden and then it all falls apart. It’s just not a very well-constructed or acted piece of entertainment, with only a few highlights, but you may struggle to remain invested in the story. Credit to the production crew because at least there was continuity and all of the sets were solid. And there was at least some attempt at including Christmas. Other than that, it’s entirely skippable.
The Child They Hid has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
Helen didn’t die. She was put in a coma
Correct. And corrected.