Movie Review :: Lifetime Original The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story

Lifetime

Lifetime gets back to its bread-and-butter with its popular ‘Ripped from the Headlines’ series of movies, this week a more recent incident that involves the dangers of online dating.

Though not really mentioned on screen, The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story takes place in 2020. Teacher Monica White, three years out of a divorce, is about to become an empty nester as her son Isaiah is about to head off to a military school. He hates the thought of leaving her alone and really pushes at her to consider dating again. Monica’s bestie Laila is also on that train, urging her to let loose and let go, especially as her 50th birthday is fast approaching. After a long day at school and having to sit with one of her students because his mom was late picking him up (and the young boy revealed that his daddy may be hurting his mommy), Monica decides to finally set up a profile on a dating app, looking for nothing more than someone to chat with. (Note that Monica did call the mom in for a conference and tried to get her to admit that she was being abused — Monica could see a bruise on her upper chest — but to no avail.) Pretty much the second she submits her profile, she gets a response from a man named Anthony. What she doesn’t know is that Anthony has just left a seedy motel after hooking up with — and murdering — a young woman named Tonita, loading the body into a shopping cart and wheeling it across the parking lot, leaving it to be discovered the next morning by a hapless employee of the store. But after a few chats, Monica invites Anthony to come visit her in Pennsylvania (he lives in the DC area), so he boards a bus and makes the trip. Everything seems to go well until after dinner when Monica asks if he got his hotel room booked for the night. He claims he did not have time, and Monica tries to insist he needs to get a room somewhere but he sweet talks his way into her house, where she makes him sleep on the sofa (and why she didn’t close and lock her bedroom door is baffling).

The next morning, she wakes up and he’s nowhere to be found, but he comes bounding in the door and surprises Monica with the good news — he’s got a job offer in the area so he can stay and get to know her better. This is a bit too fast for Monica and she assures him that he’s not going to stay in her house, so he gets back on the bus and returns to DC … and commits another murder. With two similar M.O.s (apparently there were four others), the police fear they have a serial killer on their hands, and once they identify their suspect from security camera footage from the bar where Anthony met Tonita, the media quickly dubs him ‘The Shopping Cart Killer’. (You’d think if this was such a major news story, even people in Monica’s Pennsylvania neighborhood would have heard about it but apparently they did not because no one brought it to her attention.) Monica continues to communicate with Anthony, oblivious to his alleged crimes, and invites him to visit again for her 50th birthday party, and he can finally meet her friends and family, with son Isaiah and gal pal Laila in attendance. Anthony shows up and makes nice with everyone, and then chats up Monica’s niece, asking her to meet him at a hotel later saying Monica is really too old for him (the niece is 19, he’s 38), which creeps the girl out but she doesn’t say anything. Yet. After the party, Monica allows Anthony to come to her bed, and from the looks of things it did not go well. To make matters worse, the niece texts Monica and reveals what had happened which infuriates her to the point of putting Anthony out of her house. She calls Laila and tells her what happened and that Anthony is still hanging out in her yard. Laila tells Monica she’s coming over. By this point, the Fairfax police have identified Anthony and know that he’s in Pennsylvania, somehow pinpointing him at Monica’s house but by the time they get there he is long gone, back on the bus to DC. They tell Monica what they suspect and she tells him all she can, and when the bus arrives in DC the police are waiting, taking Anthony into custody. Isaiah returns home to make sure his mom is okay, and the mother she had tried to confront at school comes to thank her for speaking up and protecting her son, promising that she will be leaving her husband. Monica hopes she will and she will keep an eye on the situation. As for her, she’s probably going to forgo the dating scene for a while.

Lifetime

The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story is a very well-done true crime story that lays out the facts of Monica’s story, although the timeline feels very condensed, leaving us with little information as to how much time passes between Anthony’s visits. It is still a compelling story but its one major flaw is that it doesn’t really give us a resolution to Anthony’s fate. What the movie doesn’t tell us is that Anthony was found guilty in January 2025 (after a four-day trial and just 30 minutes of deliberation by the jury) in the murders of Tonita and another woman whom he murdered in the same hotel, removing their bodies by shopping cart. He now has been linked to two other victims, and is being investigated into the deaths of two other women. The movie does not tell us that the jury recommended four life sentences plus ten years and a $400,000 fine for Anthony Robinson, but sentencing has yet to take place (scheduled for May 2026). The only resolution that the movie gives us is that Monica saved herself with good intuition, seeing that Anthony was not the man she thought he was and quickly getting him out of her house, leaving her to reflect on how lucky she was after learning of his crimes (although the real Monica does not feel that he was going to kill her, but she does feel that her rejection of him made him snap and kill others). It is really incumbent upon these true crime movies to give us some sort of information with some on-screen text at the very least. The way it leaves things, it makes it look like the movie is presuming his guilt without any follow-up. That just seems a tad irresponsible on the part of writers Miriam Van Emst and David Weaver, who have otherwise constructed a gripping story. Director Elisabeth Röhm does a nice job of presenting the story realistically without sensationalizing anything, but there is the issue of a weird bedroom scene in which Monica becomes the aggressor, tying Anthony to the bed frame before it turns out to be a dream. It’s weird, but is apparently a reference to Anthony wanting to tie up Monica when she invited him to her bed and she refused (the movie only shows him being a bit aggressive with what looks like an attempt at choking her), and that may explain why he was in such a bad mood afterwards (the scene as is makes it seem like he had trouble performing). There’s also a bizarre scene on the bus where Anthony rambles on to a female passenger about how doing terrible things gets easier after the first time when all she said was it must be hard to live so far away from his girlfriend (the lady saying to him ‘down in Pennsylvania’ and ‘up in DC’ is also a bit maddening because last time I checked PA was north of DC). But aside from these issues, it is very skillfully directed.

Lela Rochon is very good as Monica. She makes the woman very grounded, someone who loves her son, loves her job and the children she is tasked with teaching, using her motherly skills in the classroom, but also someone who wants to be loved but isn’t willing to put herself out there despite the best intentions of her son and friend. She shows that Monica enjoys the attention she gets from Anthony, but she knows her worth and isn’t about to lower herself just to get a man in her bed. Her Monica is never a victim, she does not suffer fools, she is strong enough to tell Anthony to get out of her house. Rochon completely grounds Monica in reality and it is a solid performance (I wonder if she met with or talked to the real Monica?). Jarod Joseph is outstanding as Anthony, able to cycle through different aspects of his personality when needed, being the smooth talker when meeting his intended victims at the bar, flying into a rage at something as simple as laughter (Tonita’s laughter because she was tipsy and having a good time led to her murder as Anthony felt she was laughing at him), turning on all the charm with Monica, becoming quite the hot head with his boss, and becoming unsettling during that bus ride. Through it all there is always an undercurrent of menace to the performance and Joseph easily slips between the charm and the danger.

Katrina Reynolds is perfect as best friend Laila, always having a little fun at Monica’s expense while ribbing her about finding her a man, but it’s always from a place of love and respect. She knows when she can be playful and when she needs to be supportive, and Reynolds makes Laila the kind of friend anyone would want to have. Trezzo White is also very good as Isaiah, also not above being playful with his mom but also serious about his love for her and not wanting to see her be alone. He also senses some red flags when he meets Anthony, and he goes into protector mode but Monica sends him back to the academy. Kendall Cross and Jason Schombing are also good as the cops who are heading up the investigation into the murders, actually showing determination in finding the killer without serving up any attitude that we often see from police officers in these movies.

People Magazine / Daniel Lin Pool Photo – Daily News-Record

In the end, The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story is a well-done true life story that should make anyone considering using a dating app to be very cautious with whoever they choose to go out with. Make it clear there will be no home visits for at least a month, maybe two! The cast all do some really good work, and even with some of its flaws, it’s still a story worth watching.

The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.

The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story Trailer

Lifetime