Movie Review :: Lifetime Network’s The Night She Disappeared

Lifetime

Lifetime’s latest ‘Sunday Night Thrills’ movie is an interesting one, a missing person thriller with some urban legend mystery thrown into the mix that should keep you glued to your seat but … does it ultimately make a lick of sense?

The Night She Disappeared stars Rachel Sellan as Gene Collins, principal of a high school that looks like a cathedral in a state with no name (at least there is none on the license plates of the cars). Gene’s daughter Lyla (Ava Weiss) also attends the school, apparently much to her chagrin as she could have gone to another nearby school but mom insisted she attend this one. Gene is the definition of a ‘helicopter parent’ (even her ex says so). Lyla is on the volleyball team and wants to go to a party with her teammates but mom forbids her to do so because those girls have reputations. It just so happens to be the weekend that Lyla is with her dad, David (Jesse Collin), and Gene warns him that Lyla wants to go to this party so he needs to keep an eye on her (hence the ‘helicopter parent’ comment). But dad either trusts his teenage daughter way too much or just doesn’t care because she easily gets out of the house by telling him she’s going to her friend’s house two blocks away so he lets her walk. Perhaps he should have done a little more hovering. Lyla arrives and the queen bees of the group, Riley (Lucia Berger) and Petra (Marissa Bondi), rib her a bit and then challenge her to a test (basically hazing the new kid at the party — a tradition they say): she has to draw a slip of paper from a hat and do what it says. Lyla picks ‘Climb fire tower’, which is the structure beneath where they are partying. Lyla wants to pick another slip because there is a legend about that tower stretching back to 1999 — anyone who climbs the tower never comes back. The film’s prologue shows just that happening to a girl named Claire, who did climb the tower but when she made her way back down, was attacked by a figure in — you guessed it — a Black Hoodie, and dragged off into the woods never to be seen again. But the girls tease Lyla about being chicken so she gathers up her nerve to accept the challenge so she can belong with the ‘cool girls’, unaware that every slip in the hat had the same challenge. Of course this was a set-up, and once Lyla gets to the top she sees her ‘friends’ pull down the ladder that she needed to reach the tower’s attached ladder. If she climbs down now, she’ll have about a ten foot drop to the ground. What’s a girl to do?

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The next morning, David calls Gene to ask if Lyla is with her, she isn’t, and Gene goes into panic/blame mode, berating David for ignoring her warnings about keeping an eye on their daughter. With no clue as to where Lyla is, Gene eventually calls the police to make a missing persons report, but Detective Tollman seems to think that perhaps Lyla is just at a friend’s house, afraid to come home at the moment because she knows she’ll be in trouble. Gene insists that Lyla is missing because she won’t answer her phone or return any texts (one text seem to be getting an answer but it never came). David also thinks Gene needs to calm down, but she is convinced the girls on the volleyball team know something, particularly Riley and Petra. The girls are eventually questioned (it’s not known if any of the others are), and Riley’s dad (Michael Strickland) is pretty pissed that Gene keeps harassing his daughter, especially since he seems to hate Lyla as much as Riley does because they feel Coach Drummond is showing the younger Lyla some favoritism when his senior daughter should be the one getting spotlighted for her future in the sport. Riley and Petra both keep up their story that Lyla left the party alone, although the facts do seem to change slightly from telling to telling, which makes Gene suspicious. So she takes the drastic step of calling the girls into her office to interrogate them, which leads to a two week suspension for Gene for abuse of power. By this point, the police have found Lyla’s hoodie by the river, covered in her blood, so much that they are certain she could not have survived and was likely swept away in the waters. Gene refuses to accept that Lyla is dead, and she knows Riley and Petra are lying because she found a disposable camera in the water and had the film developed, a photo showing Lyla with the girls and a time stamp from that night. Gene also notices in a photo an SUV parked far in the distance that looks just like the one Riley’s dad drives, so she is more than certain now that Mr. Turner is the culprit. Despite everyone, including her bestie Arya (Shanna Armogan), telling her it’s time to let go and accept Lyla is gone — David has even scheduled a funeral! — Gene enlists the help of Coach Steve to get into the Turners’ house to see if he can find Lyla (luckily Riley had left her backpack at practice so he had a reason to be at the house). He fakes needing to use the bathroom — apparently Steve has been at the house enough times to be comfortable and knowledgeable enough as to the location of the bathrooms in the house, but he finds nothing to support Gene’s theory (which was proposed by the fact that Turner was dating Claire when she disappeared). With Lyla on the verge of completely unraveling, Steve invites her to have dinner at his house so they can discuss her theory about Turner, which leads to a moment of sudden clarity as to who has taken Lyla. But is Lyla still alive, and will Gene survive once it becomes clear she knows whodunit?

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The Night She Disappeared is actually a pretty decent thriller … until you really start to think about it. The entire set-up is handled well and certainly makes sense and keeps you glued to the screen. Writer Courtney Cilman does a great job of creating a collection of characters who never act suspicious, outside of Riley and Petra who have to hide the truth, thereby always keeping us pondering who could have taken Lyla. The whole urban legend part of the story helps sell the mystery, and it is more than a legend because there is a long list of girls who have gone missing after their encounter with the fire tower. Of course Riley’s father is the Number One Suspect just because of how he behaves with Gene, but we also have to wonder if Riley is a cold-blooded killer because she obviously has ice in her veins. Petra, however, is on the edge of a nervous breakdown keeping a secret and Riley is obviously controlling her, so she may have guilt by association but she is definitely not a killer. Could it be David? Did he take Lyla just to have sole custody and used the legend to his benefit? His insistence on holding a funeral is a little questionable. What about his girlfriend Trisha (Celeste Bruno), who is completely over-the-top in her behavior. Does she have a past, was she hazed at some point and is now looking to get revenge every time there is a party at the base of the tower? Does Coach Steve have any reason to want to hurt Lyla after he’s been putting her forward on the volleyball team? What about Harold, the man who developed the photos? He seems to know a lot about the legends surrounding the fire tower. The only people we can be sure it isn’t, besides Petra and Gene, are Arya and Detective Tollman. Cilman has given us a wide choice and never allows any of the characters to give away the game until the appropriate time but … then it falls apart a bit when Gene does figure it out and confronts the culprit, who admits to killing Claire in 1999 and inventing the urban legend to cover the crime. But that doesn’t explain all the other killings/disappearances since then. That person just turned into an annual serial killer after that? There is absolutely zero reason given for Lyla’s disappearance. The suspect just seems to know when the girls are going to be at the tower (apparently it is an annual thing on the anniversary of the night Claire disappeared, so that makes it extra spooky), but has no reason to have continued the attacks except to keep the urban legend going to cover up a crime from more than 25 years ago. It really makes no sense after you get through the exhilaration of Gene fighting the person and brutally stabbing them in the gut — twice and with intention — and begin to realize there is no explanation as to why that person has continued to kill for more than two decades … and why Lyla was simply abducted and held prisoner. We do see what happened that night though, and Petra actually comes face-to-face with the assailant, who tells her Lyla broke her neck when she fell while trying to get down off the tower, so Petra’s guilt and emotional state were very real as she believed Lyla’s ‘death’ was her fault for moving the ladder. In reality, as we later learn, Lyla was whacked hard in the head to knock her unconscious so she appeared dead to Petra, but we still don’t know why the assailant has continued to kill for more than twenty years. This is one of those instances where you think, ‘wow, that was a pretty good thriller’, at the end and then begin to realize you’ve been completely bamboozled when you try to make sense of it. Director Stefan Brogren also does a nice job at keeping the story moving along, never giving away anything, and using some fancy camerawork, crazy transitions between shots, and occasionally inappropriately upbeat music to underscore a dramatic moment … a lot of which gives way to just some standard, but solid directorial work as the story progresses. If there is one complaint, and this applies to many Lifetime/LMN movies, it’s that it/they all just kind of end with very little in the way of resolution. It just feels like the case is solved and movie ends. We need more movies with a ‘Three Weeks Later’ type of epilogue to really give us a satisfying conclusion to the story.

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The cast, however, is uniformly excellent. Rachel Sellan has to carry the picture on her shoulders, treading a fine line between determined and unhinged while fighting against everyone who keeps telling her to let Lyla go. She allows us to share in her frustrations with the police, her ex and even her friend, who all feel that they are helping Gene but no one but Steve seems to want to give her the space to vent and theorize. According to Sellan’s Instagram post, this is her very first lead role after a 23-year career, and she does a great job at carrying the film, making it all feel entirely believable.

Ava Weiss is also very good as Lyla, giving her a typical teen girl rebelliousness, doing some great eye rolls whenever her mother tries to be a disciplinarian. She only has a few scenes but she makes the most of them. Lucia Berger is also excellent as Riley (does anyone else think she looks like a very young Scarlet Johansson?). She is the coldest you-know-what of the group, the Queen of the Mean Girls, obviously with a feeling of entitlement from her father’s behavior, completely in control of Petra. She really makes Riley that girl you do not want to cross. On the flip side, Marissa Bondi is wonderful as Petra, trying to feel as important as Riley at the party, but obviously just a member of the the queen’s court. Bondi does project that confidence at first, but as things progress and the girls keep being questioned, Bondi shows Petra slowly unraveling to the point that she can no longer hold it in and arranges to meet with Gene to reveal the truth. It’s a really great performance. (It sadly ends on an absurd note when Petra ends up in an accident on the way to meeting Gene, somehow with a blood alcohol level off the charts. Another piece of scripting that makes little sense.)

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Jesse Collin is fine as David (Collin, you may remember was just seen a week earlier in Secrets on the Ranch), having to be both supportive and combative with Gene, but his one emotional breakdown scene when the detective brings Lyla’s bloody hoodie to them is a bit forced. Shanna Armogan offers some nice support to Sellan as Gene’s friend Arya. Ever since we saw her performance in Murder at the Hotel, Armogan is always a welcome presence in any Lifetime/LMN movie. She just brings a warmth to each of her characters, someone you definitely want to be friends with. Michael Strickland is perfect as the overbearing Mr. Turner, doing whatever it takes to push his daughter forward, always belligerent with Gene, but showing a surprising moment of heart at one point. Chris Violette is also terrific as Coach Steve, not one to take any guff from a parent (like Turner) when it comes to his coaching decisions, the one person who truly offers Gene support when she needs it, obviously wearing his heart on his sleeve a bit as well (I mean, they could go out to dinner once in a while, but he loves to cook!). He seems like the perfect guy. Sergio Di Zio is also very good as Detective Tollman, showing some understanding to the emotions of Gene, but also doing his job and being as matter-of-fact as he can with her, and David, to not let them get their hopes up that Lyla will be found. Even when Gene oversteps with the Turners and Tollman has to reprimand her, Di Zio still gives Tollman a bit of humanity knowing what she is dealing with and not taking an attitude with her. Tim Progosh is also very good as Harold, the man who helps Gene unravel some of the 26-year-old mystery surrounding the disappearance of Claire and the urban legend, the one who actually knows that Claire was involved not with just Turner but someone else from a different school. Even though he and Gene are basically strangers, he also shows her great sympathy and empathy in his performance.

Between the performances and the pretty solid production, The Night She Disappeared is a taut thriller that will keep you guessing (it took me a good while to finally make my correct guess as to who was responsible). It’s just a shame that after rethinking the plot to write this review, it all begins to not make sense, so just watch it and enjoy it and put it out of your mind after. This would have been a three-star movie if the story had actually made sense in the end. (Perhaps some important expository scenes ended up on the cutting room floor, as was made aware to us by an actor in another Lifetime movie about her own filmed scenes that explained an important plot point which did not end up in the finished film.)

The Night She Disappeared has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.