Lifetime
Lifetime’s latest ‘Sunday Night Thrills’ really lives up to that promise with a gripping murder mystery and shifting perspectives to keep you guessing. Even if it becomes pretty obvious who the real killer is, the movie still keeps you on the edge of your seat waiting to see how it will be resolved.
The Millwood Murders: Buried Truth stars LeToya Luckett as prosecuting attorney Shenae Griffiths. Through flashbacks we see that a young girl is murdered by a figure in a Black Hoodie (naturally, although this one may be Navy Blue?) while attempting to call for help. At a trial, Shenae is on the stand testifying that her husband Leo is guilty, resulting in his conviction and sentencing to the death penalty (due to another girl being murdered earlier). Four years later, Shenae’s daughter Brooke continues to relive the night of that murder because it was she whom the girl, Danika, was trying to call and Brooke heard everything. Since then she has had very vivid dreams which she believes are revealing clues about the murder and they all point to her father being innocent. Unbeknownst to her mother, Brooke has been working with the defense attorney, who also believes based on the evidence and lack thereof, that Leo is innocent. Brooke and Shenae have a tumultuous relationship because Brooke blames her mother for sending her father to Death Row, and things become even more tense as a date has been set for his execution. Brooke and attorney Laura Anthony are working against the clock to prove the case was bungled before Leo is executed. After a fight with her mother, Brooke storms out but does not return the next day, and Shenae pays a visit to Laura to find out what’s going on, learning just how deeply Brooke has gotten into the investigation, going so far as to have rented a storage unit to house all of her father’s belonging to try and find something to exonerate him. But now Brooke has disappeared, and Laura and the cop who headed the investigation, Detective August, keep telling Shenae that Brooke is an adult and she’s probably just blowing off steam.
Lifetime
After reading some of the damning evidence Brooke and Laura have collected, Shenae begins to believe that perhaps there is more to Leo’s case than she believed, and Brooke’s disappearance only makes her more certain of that. Her frustration with August’s attitude only pushes her more to set aside what she believed and work with Laura to find the truth. She has the support of Danika’s father, Alexander, and after getting the key to the storage locker from Laura, the two of them begin to dig into the evidence. August also has a change of heart and traces Brooke’s phone, and even he begins to think perhaps their investigation had a bit of tunnelvision, casting aside who they believed was the prime suspect — gym teacher Robert, who had been seen having an animated argument with the first girl who was murdered just before her death — after Danika’s personal items and bloody material that matched her DNA were recovered in Leo’s bedroom. Shenae and Alexander go to Robert’s house and she is certain he’s holding Brooke so she breaks the basement window and shimmies herself in with Alex reluctantly behind her. They find a shocking amount of ‘evidence’ including photos of the girls from gym class in a collage, but Robert hears them in the basement and they nearly get shot before making it back out the window. August isn’t too thrilled about Shenae’s B&E, but what she’s told him has him reconsider that maybe they should have continued to focus on the gym teacher, so he makes up a reason to pay a visit to Robert to see what he can find (Shenae drives them) but the gym teacher gets really weirded out when August discovers the little shrine in the basement. He ends up arresting Robert but while Shenae was waiting in the car, she got a call from the kidnapper telling her to bring Brooke’s diaries to the location where the girls’ bodies were found, one of the old construction sites that belonged to Leo’s now defunct company. Also, Shenae got news that Leo confessed to the murders after years of proclaiming his innocence, and that did not set right with Shenae or Laura. But Laura ends up going missing as well, and when Shenae is on the phone with the kidnapper she asks to hear Brooke’s voice before she agrees to do anything. Brooke does speak to her and offers a major clue that sends shockwaves through Shenae when it becomes clear who has taken her daughter and who killed the two girls.
As written, The Millwood Murders: Buried Truth is a pretty tight, gripping thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat … even when, early on, it becomes quite clear who the real killer is (one scene in particular gives it away if you watch the characters closely and pay attention to the posture of the person in the Black Hoodie and mask). Also, with there being a very limited number of characters in the story, it is pretty easy to figure out … but the reasons for the murders are the more shocking aspects. Aside from the obvious, the story by Al Kratina is constructed well, using flashbacks to help forward the story in the present, with characters who feel like real people who have been living in a nightmare for several years. Director David F. Mewa also does a nice job at balancing the present and past scenes with some really nice matching transition shots, constantly building up the tension as the story progresses, and though we know who the killer is, we are kept on the edge of our seats to see how it will end and if Shenae will succeed in saving her daughter (and Laura). And as a bonus, it looks like this could be the start of a series of ‘Millwood Murders’ stories if this one does well enough with the viewers.
Lifetime
Really helping sell this story is the amazing cast. LeToya Luckett is terrific as Shenae, carrying the burden of having helped convict her husband of murder and then having to transition into the life of a single parent dealing with a rebellious teen, who holds her responsible, as she grows into adulthood. Luckett does a great job of going through all the emotions of dealing with that relationship, trying to not completely lose her temper with Brooke, and then learning that she’s been kept in the dark for two years. But she really goes into ‘tiger mom’ mode once Brooke disappears, and Luckett’s Shenae is exactly who you would want as a mother if you were in trouble. She has a lot of emotions to juggle from anger to guilt to determination, and Luckett does it with great skill. Amanda Thamage is also wonderful as Brooke, serving all the attitude she can muster with her mother, showing more empathy with Alexander, and real determination to prove her father’s innocence. Shane Marriott also gives a nice performance as Leo. In the courtroom, even as his wife has turned on him, he still lets her know he loves her, he does his best to tell Brooke it’s time she let him go, but he also makes it clear his ‘confession’ has a motive behind it. Marriott really makes us want him to be proven innocent before it’s too late.
Rainbow Sun Francks is really good as Alexander. When we first meet him, he’s trying to give Brooke cooking lessons at the new diner he’s about to open, hoping she will work with him some day, seeing her as the last connection to his daughter. Francks is able to show Alexander’s pain and heartache over his daughter, but he also is invested in helping Shenae find the truth. He takes his emotions a bit too far at one point, planting an unexpected kiss on her lips, but quickly draws back and apologizes, still hoping to help her get some answers. Daniela Sandiford gives a nice performance as Laura, at odds with Shenae from the start because they work on opposite sides of the courtroom, not afraid to take any digs at her for her side of the law which assumes everyone is guilty. She is always calm and professional and is confident in her belief that Leo is innocent, skillfully proving her case to Shenae to convince her to help Brooke with her work into helping Leo. Steve Belford plays Detective August as a bit of a condescending jerk at first when Shenae comes to him about Brooke not coming home, but he does have a conscience after all and begins to look into the disappearance, eventually coming to believes that perhaps Laura and Brooke were right about Leo, and that he was wrong to drop Robert as a suspect so quickly. In the end he turns out to be not such a bad guy after all. David Reale really puts Robert in a gray area because with his behavior — which could be justified since he lost his job after the accusations and can’t get work anywhere — and the sketchy shrine in his basement all suggesting the worst about him, he seems totally guilty but perhaps not of the crimes in question. If nothing else, he is a total creep, and Reale does a great job blurring the lines and deflecting from the real killer.
A great cast, a solid story, skillful and creative direction all serve up a tight nail-biter of a thriller, nicely wrapping up this story and cleverly setting up a potential future for the crime-fighting duo of Shenae and Laura as another murder case is revealed in the closing seconds. I’m more than happy to return to Millwood at some point.
The Millwood Murders: Buried Truth has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.