Movie Review :: Lifetime’s The Wife Who Knew Too Much

Lifetime

Lifetime has been upping their game with their Sunday night thrillers which often seemed like throwaways the network knew weren’t good enough for the ‘prestigious’ Saturday night time slot. But the last few have actually been quite good and the latest, The Wife Who Knew Too Much, is no exception … well, with a few exceptions which we’ll get to shortly.

The Wife Who Knew Too Much (and according to the program guide on my streaming service the title may have previously been Secret Life of the Coach’s Wife, but the current title makes much more sense) centers around Lisa Clarkson, wife of high school football coach Sam Clarkson, mom to Taylor, and affectionately (or condescendingly) known to most people in town as Mrs. Coach. Lisa is totally devoted to her family, the school and the team, working with Principal Finnegan to secure funding for a new school library on top of everything else like organizing events at school centered around football. At one such event, Sam is approached by a fellow coach who has news for him about a new coaching job that he’d had his eye on, but before the friend can give him details, a scout from a university in Ohio butts in and leads Sam away to talk about not only his star quarterback, Noah Downey, but the possibility of a coaching position at the university (and Lisa is not thrilled when she hears the news because she does not want to uproot the family and move to Ohio). At the mixer (where alcohol is being served — to the adults), Noah and Taylor ask Lisa for permission to go to a party at one of the teammate’s home, with Taylor dragging her ‘weird’ BFF Kevin along (he calls himself weird but he’s adorable, just slightly awkward around other girls). At the party, Kevin decides to talk to one of the girls who happens to be his lab partner to get her number, but her boyfriend JP quickly finds out and berates Kevin for trying to get his girlfriend’s digits until Taylor steps in and covers, saying he just wanted to study with her. Noah also gets JP to calm down, but the experience leaves Kevin a little rattled and he decides to go home, having to walk since Taylor drove. On the way home, sadly, Kevin is struck by a speeding car that stops for a moment, and then pulls away without checking on the boy. Kevin does not survive the accident.

Lifetime

No one knows yet that Kevin is dead when his mother, Ruth, calls Lisa to see if she knows where Kevin is. Lisa does not but she runs to Ruth’s house and the police arrive shortly after with the bad news. (It should be noted that Taylor and Kevin have been besties for at least ten years so Lisa and Ruth are close friends as well.) Lisa does what she can to help Ruth, but she begins to notice odd behavior around her. Sam keeps having secret conversations with Noah’s mother Avery, there are conflicting stories about who may or may not have left the party after Kevin, Noah’s car is allegedly tagged with graffiti by the rival school’s team and is in the shop (the bill for which Lisa finds in a pile of her family bills), Principal Finnegan is acting like Shady McShaderson, his patience non-existent whenever Lisa tries to talk to him, and Noah’s mother begins inserting herself into Ruth’s life to ‘help’ her out as well, and taking any opportunity she can to make Lisa think she’s over-reacting, not to mention thowing her under the bus with the detective, suggesting she allowed students to have alcohol at the mixer at school which may or may not have been illegal (serving of alcohol on school property, which Finnegan also tries to brush off on someone else in his office), and even turning Taylor against her. But Lisa isn’t letting anything go and begins putting the pieces together about that tragic night, and makes a shocking discovery about her husband as well. But will she be able to gather enough evidence to prove her claims, and even if she does will anyone believe her?

The Wife Who Knew Too Much was written by Mark Lyons (story by Joseph Wilka) and directed by Bennett Lasseter, and it really is a taut thriller in a Hitchcockian way — as evidenced by the title that is a riff on The Man Who Knew Too Much with the innocent thrown into a situation not of their making, struggling to get anyone to listen to them to prove they aren’t crazy. There’s also a lot of Gaslight in this movie as well, as poor Lisa is constantly being made to think what she believes is true is all in her head and she’s just reaching for straws. Lyons seems to be a student of the classic psychological thriller genre and his screenplay works extremely well, giving us three potential drivers involved in the incident, making us question if Noah is covering for JP, who some have said borrowed Noah’s car to make a beer run, is everyone covering for Noah, the star quarterback with the bright future, or is Sam covering for Principal Finnegan, who has a known drinking problem? Lasseter’s direction keeps the mystery going until the end, allowing Lisa to find more and more evidence that points directly to a massive cover-up, but she begins to realize she doesn’t know anymore who she can trust except perhaps Ruth. Lasseter just does a great job with the direction, the production design crew makes the movie look like a million bucks (or more), and the music score adds to the atmosphere. The only thing that threatens to undo all the great work are some of the performances.

Lifetime

First the good: Nicole Unger is terrific as Lisa. We know right from the get-go that this is a woman who puts everyone else before herself — her husband, his career, her daughter, the school — driven to get the new school library funded, but also compassionate enough to put everything aside to comfort her friend. We feel her frustration when she is constantly talked down to, her drive to care for everyone else seen as weakness, allowing people to feel they can take advantage of her. This feeling of helplessness only drives her to put herself in danger to prove she’s right, and through her performance we fear for her when she finds herself in the wrong places at the wrong times. There are times when Lisa could be overly-hysterical, but Unger manages to contain those feelings, just letting them boil under the surface, knowing if she explodes that no one will take her seriously. Unger really gives a masterful performance with a wide range of emotions.

Matt Pohlkamp, a familiar face to Lifetime and LMN viewers, usually billed as Matthew and recently seen in the utterly ridiculous The Wrong Obession, is really good as Sam. He is totally believable as the husband and coach, and he is really masterful with the way he can talk to Lisa to not make it seem like he’s gaslighting her. His performance is just totally natural, but he also shows that Sam is always the one in control, clearly trying to control the whole situation to save his career and the potential of his star quarterback. Olivia Gropp does a nice job as daughter Taylor in her few scenes, at times making us wonder if she herself is also part of the cover-up, but later showing that she is being pulled in different directions as she is also being gaslighted a bit to make her believe her mother is losing her mind. Steven Hemminger is completely believable as a high school football player, authentically showing the struggle within him over the accident and cover-up, keeping the truth from his girlfriend while being pressured by JP to keep the secret, reminding him, as the coach tells them, that they are a team on and off the field. It’s such a good performance that we don’t know really until the end if he covering for himself or for JP (and Parker Sack’s performance as JP also goes a long way into making us believe either of them could have been responsible for Kevin’s death). Tiffany Montgomery fills the role of the ‘femme fatale’ perfectly, shady from the beginning when she surreptitiously shows Lisa a wad of cash the scout from Ohio gave her to help her guide Noah in that direction (when Lisa questions what seems like a bribe, Avery simply says, ‘It’s legal now’). As the cover-up progresses, she is always around, always taking little digs at Lisa (perhaps for more reasons than just the accident), always shady and always drawing attention whenever she is on screen. Mischa Hutchings also does a nice job as Kevin’s mother, Ruth, never becoming hysterical but accurately showing the sense of loss a mother would feel, almost like she’s in a state of limbo. And in the very short time Jack Snyder is on screen as Kevin, he does such a great job with his performance that it is devastating when he is killed. We feel his awkwardness around the other kids at the party and we feel his bond with Taylor, so the tragedy is felt even harder because Snyder is so good.

For the not so good, Justin Rashad Stewart’s performance as Principal Finnegan is always combative. He never speaks to Lisa in a calm tone, he never wants to hear her out, he always tries to turn any conversation about the accident in a different direction to the point that Lisa believes he may have killed Kevin, driving drunk after the party. He is over-the-top shady, speaking at a volume always at 11, showing zero respect for Lisa, and even pinning the blame on her for the withdrawal of funds for the library from a wealthy donor while the bank also backtracks on its loan. Stewart is so annoying and Lasseter should have reined him in (or perhaps he found that he couldn’t and just gave up and let Stewart do his thing). NaTosha DeVon is also not great as the detective, overplaying the part of trying to be a neutral party while at the same time clearly suspicious of Lisa (especially after she speaks with Avery in private). These are the two weak points of the movie, but they aren’t enough to ruin it altogether.

The Wife Who Knew Too Much manages to overcome those not great performances because the story is well-crafted, the film is well-directed and produced, and the main cast all do excellent jobs making their characters feel real and making the entire situation believable. This is certainly one of Lifetime’s better thrillers and well worth a watch.

The Wife Who Knew Too Much has a run time of 1 hour 28 minutes, and is rated TV-14.