Movie Review :: Lifetime Movie Network’s The Pastor Who Preys

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Lifetime Movie Network continues the new year with its ‘Deadly Resolutions’ series of movies, and this thriller is like old home week for the cast. Most of the major players have been in LMN or Lifetime movies recently, and two appeared in the same movie, Secret Lives of Sister Wives. While this story may seem to be an overly familiar one, with a lot of familiar faces, it ends up giving us one of the better and most unexpected twists that elevates it above the usual fare. We’ll do our best not to spoil it.

The Pastor Who Preys (nice twist on that last word) has a bit of set-up to get us into the main story. There is the main character, Nicole (Amanda Nicholas), a New York fashion designer who is about to launch her own line with her bestie Taylor (Maxie McClintock) handling the marketing. Amanda just needs to get away from the city for a while to recharge before the big launch, and her cousin, Amanda (Analisa Wall), has let her know there is a house for rent in her small town neighborhood. That house belonged to Phyllis (Libby Blake), a parishioner at the local church pastored by Caleb Whitley (Daniel Stine). Libby was best friends with Caleb’s wife Jenn (Clark Sarullo), but was brutally murdered in the parking lot of a pharmacy, what everyone believed was a robbery gone wrong. What most don’t know is that Phyllis had just purchased a pregnancy test, and from her weird interaction with Caleb and Jenn at church earlier in the day, it seems that Caleb is the number one suspect to be both the potential father and killer. But Nicole doesn’t know about the murder until after she moves in, and after she finds a love letter hidden in a closet. She also doesn’t know that Amanda and her husband Tom (Trevor Lyons) are having a bit of a rough patch, and after Amanda witnesses the two having a loud argument before Tom drove off, Amanda admits that she had an affair but she won’t reveal yet who it was with.

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Instead, Amanda drags Nicole to the church group and gets her involved in some fundraising activity, and it becomes clear to her that there is all kind of tension in the room, and Caleb’s mother, Hattie (Annette Saunders), is quite overbearing, wanting to protect and preserve the legacy of the church that her husband founded. Now that burden is laid on Caleb’s shoulders. Things aren’t great in his marriage either. Jenn suffered a miscarriage not long after Phyllis was murdered, and Caleb has been distant, leaving the house late at night with only the vaguest of explanations. Amanda finally comes clean to Nicole that she had an affair with Caleb, and Nicole swears she will not tell, but Amanda then goes and tells Caleb she told her cousin and that night she ends up dead at the bottom of the stone stairs in her garden, pushed down by the same figure who murdered Phyllis. You guessed it — wearing a Black Hoodie! Both women also recognized their killer so it has to be Caleb, right? Nicole remembers the love letter — which mysteriously disappeared after she had casually mentioned it to Caleb and Jenn just after moving in and meeting them — and the distinct handwriting, and mentions this to Detective Chandler (Wade Hunt Williams). She is determined to find another sample of Caleb’s handwriting to confirm her belief that he wrote it, which would also confirm that he killed Amanda (and probably Phyllis). Caleb begins to find himself in more hot water as Jenn reveals she knows about his affairs, and then another parishioner, Lacey (Erika Monet Butters), moseys into the church after overhearing the argument and lets Caleb know that they can work together to get Jenn out of his life so they can pick up their own romance where they left off. Oh, and Jenn is now suddenly pregnant though we may also question who the father is since there has been zero romantic chemistry between her and Caleb (but we have to go along with Caleb being the father). Caleb is about to get an award for being a community leader, so that gives Nicole the opportunity to sneak into his office to find something he wrote, but she finds more than she bargains for when she is confronted by the actual Black Hoodie Killer. Will she be able to survive and reveal the truth to everyone?

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I have to say The Pastor Who Preys, or The Pastor’s Double Life as it was originally titled on my TV listings app, is a deceptively clever thriller, written by Michael Perronne. The whole set-up to the story doesn’t come off as contrived, and the bulk of the teleplay seems like it could be any TV movie about a lecherous man of the cloth who has to kill to keep his secrets, but then it just gives us a plot twist that comes out of nowhere … or perhaps upon a second viewing the clues may actually be there, but with a first look it was a total surprise. The characters are all written extremely well. No one is over-the-top, no one is an obvious suspect nor an obvious red herring. There is no reason for us not to believe the killer isn’t Caleb. When he goes out for his late night walks, he is wearing the killer’s uniform (and when he goes for his daytime runs, he is quite happy to do it shirtless, offering up some eye candy for the neighbors and the viewers, but causing Jenn some discomfort, stopping short of calling him an attention whore). So we never question Caleb’s guilt, but there are other potential suspects right under our noses. The key is that the victims all knew their assailant. Director Linden Ashby, best known for his role as Cameron Kirsten on The Young and the Restless and as a director of several Lifetime networks thrillers, does a great job of making the whole story feel like a seedy story of adulterous activity within a small church-centered community, nothing too over-the-top, and then throwing in some shockingly brutal killings. Phyllis’ stabbing is quite shocking, even though it’s mostly hidden, but it is violent without being gruesome. Amanda’s death is also quite horrifying because she’s still alive after she’s pushed down the stairs, but the killer gives her one good head bash against a rock to finish the job that may make you gasp. Ashby does a great job of melding the horror with the mundane. Now, if I have one little quibble — whoever did the set dressing or production design deserves to be reprimanded for the silver tape slapped up on the outer doors of the church as crosses. It’s not even smoothed out enough to hide the bubbles, or, it seems, the tape was put over something protruding on the door making it seem like an air bubble. Either way, it was sloppy and stood out like a sore thumb making it obvious that the building probably was not a real church.

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Ashby has also assembled a terrific cast headed by Amanda Nicholas and Daniel Stine. Nicholas gives Amanda a charm that makes her fit in nicely with the small town neighbors, but she retains enough of that big city edge to also make her feel just a little out of place, especially when she finds herself having to head up some aspect of the fundraiser. She literally just arrived in town and her cousin has her involved like she’s a member of the Church Ladies League. Nicholas also shows that blood is thicker than water, supporting her cousin even after she learns it was Amanda’s fault that her marriage is in distress, putting the blame on Caleb for taking advantage of her in a vulnerable moment. She just makes Nicole someone you would want to have in your corner.

Stine is also really good as Caleb. We never really get to see him preaching, so we don’t really know how dynamic he in in the pulpit, and the way the women of the neighborhood talk about him it seems the only reason they’re attending his church is because he’s the hot pastor. I guess all of that shirtless jogging is what is reeling them in. Stine does play Caleb as conflicted, very much holding in some secrets, trying to keep his extracurricular activities on the down low while still trying to be a pleasant and welcoming presence in the neighborhood and at church. He also never gives away if he is or isn’t the killer. Sometimes actors just go too obvious with the performances, and while Stine has to be shady and guarded after he comes home late at night — whether from killing or fooling around with another woman at church — we never really know if he’s being honest or not, so we always just have to assume that since these women he’s slept with are being killed, then he must be the killer. But … there is also a bit of cluelessness to his performance, purposeful, that also makes us question our own suspicions about Caleb, so it all works on so many levels.

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Clark Sarullo is terrific as Caleb’s wife Jenn. She is the devoted wife, but she can tell something is off with the way Phyllis acts at the beginning. In addition to Caleb’s infidelity, she also has to deal with the meddling mother-in-law who pops up at the house unannounced and makes dinner — a problem easily solved by just taking away her key. Sarullo also has to make Jenn a character we can sympathize with so that we never for a moment think that perhaps Jenn is the one taking out the women she may see as coming between her and her husband. Could she be the killer? Annette Saunders does a nice job as Caleb’s mother Hattie. She is a busybody with no boundaries, and she really is more concerned about her late husband’s legacy than she is with the comfort of Jenn, getting a bit insulted when Caleb has to ask her to call from now on before she just shows up. But with her focus on the church, is she aware of her son’s proclivities? Could she possibly know all that is going on and is willing to do anything to protect what she and her husband built, or does she have some dark secrets of her own? Again, Saunders does not give an obvious performance to throw any suspicion her way, keeping things on an even keel. But does she have it in her to kill?

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Wade Hunt Williams gets to play a character 180 degrees away from his recent performance as a wrongly accused man in The Past is Never Buried. Now he gets to play detective and he does so with a matter-of-fact attitude, but never outright accusatory as many cops in these movies are portrayed. Instead Williams shows that Detective Chandler is listening closely and watching intently as he questions the suspects, looking for any signs of suspicion in their body language, his mind always working behind his eyes.

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Erika Monet Butters is terrific in her few scenes with Stine. She comes into the story late, so she has to do a lot of work to let us know Lacey has a past with Caleb through her dialogue, but she is unabashedly open with her desire to rekindle that relationship, and she is willing to perjure herself while being questioned by Chandler to assure him that Caleb wouldn’t hurt a fly. But … perhaps she knows he wouldn’t because she would to get what she wants? That would also be a twist we don’t see coming. Analisa Wall does a good job as Amanda, having to keep up the facade that everything is fine and dandy, forced by Caleb to remain part of the church group so no one becomes suspicious of them, but obviously carrying the weight of her secrets until she can finally unload them to Nicole. Trevor Lyons is also good as her husband Tom, unable to hide his anger with Amanda because she won’t tell him who she had the affair with, and just suspicious enough to make the detective think he may have killed his wife. He certainly didn’t kill Phyllis but could he have killed Amanda in the hopes of making the two murders seem related? That would certainly be an unexpected twist, wouldn’t it?

The Pastor Who Preys really is a deceptive murder mystery thriller that lays out a pretty mundane subject of infidelity we’ve seen too many times, but layers in the shocking murders and all of the potential suspects without ever once giving away the killer’s identity to the viewers. Having seen many of these movies, about halfway through I can say who did it, and I was certain I knew this time and was just waiting for the end, expecting to give the movie a so-so review. Instead I was surprised and pleased that they managed to not make everything as obvious as it seems. Great job!

The Pastor Who Preys has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.