Movie Review :: Lifetime’s The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story

Lifetime

When is an abduction and survival story not an abduction and survival story? When it’s Lifetime’s latest ‘Ripped from the Headlines’ movie, The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story.

The TV movie is centered around 15-year-old Alina Thompson (Brielle Robillard), and her parents Carl (Sam Trammell) and Nancy (Ashley Jones). Alina and her bestie Nathalie (Bukola Ayoka) see an announcement about a modeling contest with a $500 prize and a chance at a modeling contract, so the two girls sneak off without telling their parents — requiring a city bus ride (gasp!) to another town — and once they arrive and are given the rules (like if any photographer asks you to do nudity say no and report them immediately), the girls are selected by different photographers and begin posing (it’s like a posing free-for-all with dozens of girls all over the place). Nathalie’s photographer notices her checking out Alina and suggests he take some photos of the two of them together, which they agree to, but after a couple of snaps he dismisses Nathalie and focuses on Alina. Needless to say, Nathalie is not happy (and as this is 1984-1985 — though it is not specified anywhere onscreen, but the movie playing at the local mall is Footloose, and the music gives a definitely mid-80s vibes even if the clothing and hairstyles don’t) and this seems to be a case of the pretty Black girl being overshadowed by the pretty, blonde White girl. The photographer, William Bradford (Steve Byers), seems professional and wants to take more shots of Alina the following weekend. She does not give him her phone number or address though because mom and dad do not know she is there.

It’s not long before they do know when the event’s organizer, John (Gabriel Burrafato), calls the house to let Alina know she was selected as the top model of the event and has won the $500 prize. Dad Carl is not happy and insists that Alina will not be going back and will not be collecting her prize money, which prompts the girl to snap at both parents that she hates them! Poor mom did nothing but deliver the news, but after they all cool down a bit she tells Alina that she and Carl have agreed that she can attend the next event and collect her prize only if one of them accompanies her … and that she puts graduation and college first. Agreed. So dad takes Alina and Nathalie to the next event, but Alina can sense there is something going on with Nathalie, who decides to don a swimsuit (a one-piece) and ’embarrass herself’ according to Alina. Meanwhile, dad just hangs around pretending to be Carl the Photographer, keeping an eye on Alina. While taking photos, William asks Alina to try a different location down by a barn on the property to take advantage of the chiaroscuro lighting — a term Alina is not familiar with (it’s a strong contrast between light and dark) and William tells her she needs to learn these things but HE doesn’t even know how to pronounce the word, pronouncing the CH when it is actually a K sound as in KEE-aro-scuro. Anywho, Carl goes into a panic when he can’t find Alina and John tells him he saw her and William go down to the barn. When Carl finds them, he sees William step over to Aline and unbutton the top of her blouse and adjust her hair, so he jumps in a starts pretending to take pictures himself, driving William away, and totally pissing off his daughter who can only see her modeling aspirations fly out the window.

When William returns home, he notices the blonde teenage girl sunbathing next door — the same girl, Tracy (Laura Provenzano), whom Alina had met at the mall when she spotted the girl sitting on the floor outside of a store crying and planned to meet up with Sunday — and she notices him drop something as he was going into his house. She picks up the photo and takes it to him, and he gets the idea to ask Tracy if she’d like to take some modeling shots, which she finally agrees to. Earlier in the story, William had offered to take some photos of a bartender in his local hangout, taking her to the desert, but returning alone. When Tracy doesn’t return home, her mother goes to William’s house to ask if he’d seen her and he claims she needed to use his phone, which wasn’t working (she did try to make a call but he unplugged it from the jack), and then he gave her a ride to the mall. Tracy’s mother feels he is not telling the truth and goes to the police. Alina only finds out about Tracy from a Missing Persons flyer taped to a column at the mall, and the girl’s disappearance only makes Alina’s parents even more concerned for her safety. Alina and Nathalie have been on the outs but the reconnect and Alina asks about a ‘trunk show’ at a clothing store at the mall. Nathalie tells her it was cancelled and when Alina asks if she wants to get together Sunday, Nathalie tells her she has to babysit. Alina also has a boyfriend, Nick, whom Nathalie warns is not the guy Alina thinks he is, always making passes at other girls at school, but Nick has ‘pinned’ Alina so he is absolutely devoted to her. That is until Alina runs into him at the mall with another girl, and when confronted Nick pretends not to know who Alina is. Then on that Sunday, Alina goes to the mall again and the clothing store is closed … because there is a trunk show and she sees Nathalie modeling … and Nick is in the front row! Are those two also dating? (When confronted later Nathalie is adamant that they are not although Nick tried and she shut him down).

Alina does not know by this time that the police have gotten a pretty solid lead after questioning William that he is the prime suspect in Tracy’s disappearance, and after talking to the 24 Hour Photo Mat guy — who related a moment when William actually stood in the store and chewed up the last roll of negatives he had processed — and learning that the bartender who disappeared may have been taken to the desert after interviewing another woman who was able to escape before he killed her, they arrest William. Tracy heads back to the mall because she was supposed to meet William there to go to a new location for photos after he promised her an agency in New York was interested, and as a car pulls up and she begins to walk toward it … the picture freezes and dissolves to 22 years later, with Carl looking at the local newspaper. On the center page is a layout of dozens of presumed missing young women and teenage girls and Carl sees Alina’s picture. He calls for his wife, and next thing you know a detective is at the door. Wait — was Alina abducted and murdered? PSYCH! She is there, all grown up and introduces herself to the detective. Turns out there was interest in reopening the cold cases of the missing girls from the photos they had collected from William’s stash. Since nothing happened to Alina, all they had was a photo and hoped if any of the potential victims were alive, they would come forward. They were able to identify about 13 out of more than 30 girls, a few were alive, a few were still unaccounted for, the rest were still mysteries. But the one thing everyone is sure of is that Carl saved Alina’s life that day at the barn. The end.

Okay, I think we have to really question that conclusion. That barn was on the same property as the entire modelling event. The place was crawling with girls and photographers, and even though it was a short walk away it is extremely doubtful that William would have murdered Alina there. That is a sure fire place where he can get his next victim so why would he, as the saying goes, ‘poop where he eats’? Sure, he has randomly lured women to photo shoots and killed them — and there is never any explanation as to why he is murdering them — but why would he mess up a good thing because if Alina turned up dead on the property, he would be the prime suspect. He was trying to build trust with Alina to take her to a remote location, which is where he did most of his killing (although he does brutally assault another bartender outside behind the bar when she begins to realize he’s sketchy but we never see what happened after he smashed her in the face with his tripod), so the notion that Carl saved her life that day is a real reach, especially since Alina was planning to meet William at the mall the day he was arrested. I don’t think for a minute he was going to murder her at that barn which makes the title of the movie a real mislead. Alina was never abducted, never physically assaulted, never escaped during an attempted murder so she isn’t technically a ‘survivor’. She got lucky. The one woman the police interview was a survivor, but she didn’t have a compelling enough story to be turned into a movie (the real Alina did go on to become a model, so that is what makes the story noteworthy, I suppose).

As far as the acting, everyone is fine-ish. Byers always seems shady the way he looks at Alina, so I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. Brielle Robillard portrays teenage Alina with authenticity, although she’s written in such a way that she’s hormonally imbalanced, flying off the handle at the slightest ‘injustice’ from her parents. Yes, teenagers can be moody, but the way Robillard was directed to play Alina makes her a bit unhinged (she freaks out at her parents more than she does at Nathalie, who just lies to her left and right because of her jealousy, or Nick who she finally sees is the person Nathalie warned her about). Sam Trammell and Ashley Jones are decent as the parents, and Bukola Ayoka is also fine as Nathalie, though not really hiding that fact that she’s lying to Alina about certain things despite Alina never picking up on her behavior.

The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story could have been a more compelling story if the title character actually had some kind of survival story. As it stands, this ‘Ripped from the Headlines’ story falls flat in the end.

The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story has a run time of 1 hour 28 minutes, and is rated TV-14.

The Girl Who Survived: The Alina Thompson Story | Official Trailer

Lifetime