LMN
The Lifetime Movie Network, aka LMN, launches a new themed month of thrillers under the banner ‘Twisted Fate’, kicking off with The Perfect Killer. Right off the bat, the artwork the network chose to create makes this look like it’s going to be a werewolf movie — which would be interesting for LMN — but if you look into the movie’s IMDb page, there is much more appropriate artwork that’s actually kind of cool, like a 1980s horror movie. The movie actually does have the classic ‘the call is coming from inside the house’ premise, but with the very modern twist of AI causing all kinds of mayhem.
The Perfect Killer centers around 16-year-old Charlie Gibson (Laura Provenzano), who decides to go out one night with a fake ID to get into a club. In the wee hours of the morning, her parents get a phone call from a very distressed Charlie begging for help. Her father Jack goes out to find her, and when he gets to where she is he ends up getting shot in the chest. Charlie comes home wondering why her stepmother Mila (JaNae Armogan) is still awake and is told about the phone call. Charlie’s phone has been dead for hours so she didn’t make the call, and the police arrive to deliver the bad news about Jack. His death has affected many people in the Gibsons’ circle, including his best friends Harrison and Tim, and their wives Rebecca and Melody … with whom it turns out Jack was having affairs. It gets to the point that one has to ask who wasn’t Jack sleeping with. Charlie’s life becomes even more complicated when a woman named Alyssa begins stalking her, finally confronting her face-to-face and, well, she is Charlie’s birth mother! It’s a lot for the teen to unpack.
After being invited to dinner at Rebecca’s house, her son and Charlie’s friend Matthew storms out, because he can’t stand his mother being so fake to Mila and Charlie, and he reveals the affair to Charlie. Suspects are piling up as to who could have killed Jack, with Mila at the top by not being completely honest with the police, as well as Tim who owed Jack a lot of money. But Mila has been getting threatening texts so it can’t be her … can it? Could it be Alyssa, who has suddenly appeared in town again just before Jack’s death, having been banished from Charlie’s life because of her addiction? Is it Harrison, who knew about his wife’s affair and allegedly went to the family cabin somewhere to sort things out? Or is it one of the many women he was screwing around with behind Mila’s back? And who of them is clever and skilled enough to use an AI app to recreate not only Charlie’s voice, but the detective’s as well to lure the police officer watching the house away?
The Perfect Killer is one of LMN’s wildest movies yet just because there is so much going on that it makes your head spin as each new plot twist is introduced. It seems that every female character that comes into the picture is having an affair with Charlie’s dad … except for her biological mother (and her sister). We’ll assume Detective Faulkner (Tonjha Richardson) is also not in his sexual circle but the way she behaves at times makes you wonder. You might even think that by the way Harrison reacted to the news of Jack’s death that he was sleeping with him too but his reasons for running off become clear when his wife’s infidelity is revealed. There is just a lot going on and then the Alyssa part of the story is tossed in that complicates things further, often confusing things so that you sometimes lose track of who’s who. But … the writing by Roxanne Boisvert and Audrey C. Marie is so wildly entertaining that you can forgive some of the more head-scratching moments, and they do a great job — along with Boisvert’s direction — at keeping the real killer’s identity a secret until the big reveal in a pretty clever moment where they make a major misstep. They also give Charlie a clever way to also reveal the killer to the police. But you almost have to laugh when the police arrive and the killer’s overwrought reaction, seeming at any minute to say, ‘And I would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids.’ IFKYK. The only real missed opportunity is the use of the AI app. That is such a central part of the story that it should have been used more. And the movie’s title is pretty generic and nonsensical.
The cast is pretty decent as well. Provenzano really has to carry the picture on her shoulders since all of the other characters are in her orbit. Unfortunately she’s written with some wild mood swings, one second carrying on like she’s not dealing with the death of her father to being highly emotional the next (mainly because some new information is dropped on her). None of that is her fault though, and she really does do a wonderful job as Charlie. JaNae Armogan is good as Mila but again it’s the writing that does her no favors, always making her do dumb things that puts her right in the detective’s spotlight. Lora Burke has one of the more complicated roles and she is excellent playing with all of her emotions as Melody, and it seems most of the character development after Charlie was focused on her. Kirsten Comerford is fine as Alyssa, spending the first half of her appearance in silence until she finally musters up the nerve to talk to Charlie, but by the end she turns out to be one of two people Charlie can trust. The other is Matthew, played by Ben Steele Caldwell. Aside from the one moment where he’s written to have a hissy fit when Charlie and Mila show up for dinner — unannounced to him — he is a true friend to Charlie, willing to help her out however he can … and without a hint of romance in the air.
Director Boisvert manages to juggle all of the wild plot points and very skillfully employs flashbacks to explain some of the reveals later in the movie (such as all the times Alyssa was ‘stalking’ Charlie) that helps it all make a weird kind of sense. Honestly, The Perfect Killer was much better than expected, and very much better than the terrible artwork LMN created for the movie. It has a solid mystery, some excellent performances, and head-spinning twists that actually make it a very entertaining watch.
The Perfect Killer has a run time of 1 hour 30 minutes, and is rated TV-14.