Lifetime
Lifetime’s ‘Sunday Night Thrills’ heats up with a Florida-set mystery filled with a suspicious death, mean girls and infidelity.
To Catch a Cheater — a title that only applies to the story in a very roundabout way — stars Kate Watson as divorcée Monica, with a son, Leo, off at college and daughter Hannah dealing with the pressures of being a high school senior and a child of divorce. When we first see Monica, she and her friends Bridget and Kim are slo-mo walking to a tented area surrounded by police. When the flaps are pulled back, Monica gets a look of horror on her face and we’re transported back in time a week earlier. Graduation is on the horizon and Hannah is asking her mother to please be civil and sit with her ex, David, at graduation so she doesn’t feel like a freak. She Facetimes Leo and he tells her he talked their dad into being civil and will sit with Monica for Hannah. At school, Hannah’s friends Megan and Charli are talking about some of the pranks they’ve pulled, but apparently the last one did not go well but Charli wants to pull another one on their boyfriends, a Loyalty Test, setting up a date with each girl showing up at the other’s date to see if the boyfriend gets flirty with them. Hannah is not really down for this but she goes along because Charli knows how to apply peer pressure to get others to do what she wants. At this point you’re hoping it’s Charli that was inside that tent because she’s just evil. The girls agree to go along with the ‘prank’ but they are not going to film it this time. Hannah then discovers her locker has been trashed somehow, and Megan is a bit upset but Charli thinks it’s funny (did she do it?). The girls set up their dates, and when Megan meets up with Hannah’s boyfriend Hunter, he’s a bit shocked and bewildered. Hannah goes to the park near the beach but the guy she’s waiting for, Nick, never shows. However, she sees something concerning and begins to walk away but is confronted by someone she seems to know. Cut to Monica answering the door and the police asking her to come with them … and maybe bring some friends. Now we’ve circled back to the opening and, unfortunately, the body in the tent is Hannah’s.
David flies in from Chicago and Leo comes home from college for the funeral service, and while they are all still grieving afterwards, Officer Hayes comes to tell them that the case is going to be closed, and Hannah’s wounds are consistent with suicide. Monica doesn’t buy it, but they are assured if any new evidence arises they will be notified. The tragedy has brought a bit of a truce to Monica and David, and he wants to stay in Florida for a while to see if anything new develops and to just be there to console Monica after Leo returns to college as finals are on the horizon. Bridget and Kim also try to offer support, but they are busy at the same time launching their own skin care/cosmetics line so they aren’t as focused on Monica as she would expect them to be, quite frankly offended when they suggest that maybe she should go back to work part time just to take her mind off of her daughter’s tragic death. Monica still does not believe Hannah took her own life, but after meeting with her counselor at school — neither she nor David knew Hannah was having daily sessions with her — the lines are a little blurred as to what the truth may be. Hannah was dealing with a lot at school, and she could put on a smile regardless of how she felt, so was she just putting on a facade of happiness at home? Monica tries to talk to Hunter but he runs away, and later at a dinner with her friends and their daughters, Monica lets slip that the counselor gave her Hannah’s diary but she hasn’t read it and doesn’t know if she will. Charli and Megan seem upset, and they say it’s just because of Hannah’s death, but it’s clear when they leave the table that they know something and Charli is insisting that Megan keep it together. At the same time, Kim’s husband Doug comes home, making a comment about not knowing there was going to be a full house for dinner, and Kim hisses that she reminded him before he left for work. She reveals to Monica and Bridget that she fears he is about to leave her, but Monica believes Kim is just under a lot of pressure with the company launch. Later that night, someone breaks into Monica’s house and ransacks Hannah’s room, stealing the diary. Monica clearly sees the Black Hoodied intruder’s shoes and knows immediately that is was Hunter. But why?
Lifetime
While Monica keeps digging, her friends become a bit more distant, especially when accusations are thrown around that perhaps Charli’s bullying is responsible for Hannah’s death, and it’s not long before Monica gets a special delivery — a photo someone took of her at the site where Hannah died, with ‘Stop Digging!’ Sharpied on the back. David becomes concerned but after picking up some flowers and a gift for Monica, he’s attacked in broad daylight by a pack of men in Black Hoodies, landing in the hospital with broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Kim’s husband Doug, who is a retired cop or works with the cops, tells them that maybe it’s time they just accept the official report on Hannah and move on before something worse happens, but Monica persists. Hunter shows up at her house, letting himself in again (leading to a pretty nice jump scare for Monica and the viewers), and he finally admits that Charli put him up to stealing the diary but he doesn’t know why, and he also assures Monica that he loved Hannah, they were good, but that night he was so upset that he left a very harsh voice mail for her. Since they can’t find her phone they don’t know if she ever heard it. Bridget insists that they carry on with the planned 18th birthday party — Hannah, Charli and Megan have the same birthday — to honor Hannah, but that will be very awkward because Monica happens to spot Bridget and Doug canoodling on a park bench, and now has to try to play nice at the party where all are in attendance. It becomes even more awkward when Monica discovers Hannah’s missing bracelet under a pillow on Charli’s bed, confronting Charli (which becomes physical when Charli lunges at her to take it back while her friend takes video and posts it to make it seem like Monica attacked Charli), and getting arrested later at her house for the altercation. Monica now firmly believes Bridget is covering for Charli, so she finally arranges to meet with Kim to tell her about Doug and Bridget and Kim appears very upset by the news, but as they leave the restaurant Monica gets very sleepy. Kim puts her in the car, apparently having drugged the coffee she kept pouring (the waitress helpfully left the entire pot at their table like they were the only people there who wanted coffee), and drives to the beach where Hannah died. Kim drags Monica out of the car and somehow Bridget appears out of nowhere and finally the truth is revealed about Hannah’s death and the affair. But will any of them make it out of there alive?
To Catch a Cheater has a really taut screenplay by Rachel Morton that builds up the mystery around Hannah’s death while keeping the viewers totally in the dark as to what really happened. All we know for sure is that it wasn’t suicide, but we never know until the very end who it was she was confronted by at the beach (or what happened to her phone), but it all ties into the discovery of the affair first by Hannah, who was going to tell her mother, meaning it was one of the adults — Bridget, Doug or Kim — who was responsible for her death. But was it murder or an accident? We won’t give that part away. We do also find out what happened to the phone, but we never know if Hannah heard Hunter’s voice mail. The whole story is just skillfully crafted, and while it may get a bit overwrought at the end with the confession, it was still a good twist that you may never see coming. Director Damian Romay also does a great job of building the suspense, used that jump scare effectively, and kept the story on track, never letting it drag or become too obvious. The only problem is there were some audio issues — perhaps a broadcast problem — that muffled some of the dialogue, and he just doesn’t get great performances out of some of the actors.
That is not the case with Kate Watson, though. She is always terrific in everything she does, and this performance is no exception. She portrays Monica as a content mother, fine with her divorcée status (the relationship had become very contentious), happy to be a mom and doting on her daughter, maybe not with the best relationship with Leo, but she has a good life. Then she has to take the character through all of her grief and confusion and disbelief, not willing to accept her daughter took her own life, but completely in the weeds on how to get the resolution and closure she needs. Even in moments when she has to put on a smile, Watson still allows Monica’s grief to emanate from her but she never just becomes a shell of a human. She shows strength and determination, and perhaps she is able to channel some of that into helping her friend with the truth about her husband since she can’t get the truth about her daughter. Watson is a terrific actress and she makes just about everything she’s in very watchable.
Lifetime
On the other hand, I did not get a lot from the performances of Sheila Leason and Jessie Pettit as Bridget and Kim, respectively. Pettit in particular. Right from the opening as they go to identify the body, while Watson is showing complete horror on her face, Pettit looks like she’s about to laugh right before she covers her mouth. The rest of her performance felt emotionless, and even when she had to show emotion it felt fake (well, to be fair, it was fake because she knew about the affair and was drugging Monica so she was selling her tears to Monica but I wasn’t buying that Monica was buying it). Even during the final confrontation, her hysterics felt forced and she was just reciting her lines using volume instead of real emotion. Leason is a bit better and does manage to serve up some real indignation when it appears Monica is accusing Charli of being complicit in Hannah’s death, but there are also times when her line readings are just flat, and in her final moments all I got from the performance was, ‘Acting!’ I hate to come off as mean-spirited with my critique, but these are major roles and I never felt like they connected with the story or the characters, and Watson just steamrolled them with her performance.
Philip Boyd is becoming a reliable LMN/Lifetime player, giving David a nice edge with Monica when he first arrives, bristling at her when it seems like she’s making this all about her own grief but not taking his feelings into account, and then finally letting down the walls that came between them in the first place, putting them on some common ground that they had not shared in years. Jordan Kennedy doesn’t have a lot to do as Hannah, but she does manage to show the layers to the character in her short screen time, from seemingly happy teen at home to somewhat troubled by her friends at school. Lily Bowen does a nice job as Megan, the one with a conscience. She goes along with Charli’s pranks, perhaps just so she won’t be bullied or ostracized, but she really shows how the situation is eating away at her to the point she finally tells Charli that after graduation they are done. Valentina Rivas is actually perfection as ‘mean girl’ Charli, a real prankster at school (and mean pranks at that), but able to appear as pure as the driven snow when she needs to. She’s the modern day Eddie Haskell. But she is so good at it that you think right from the start that she is the one who deserves to be in that tented area before we know who it is, and then you feel bad for wishing that on her but that just proves she has done her work at making Charli the villain who deserves whatever fate is to befall her. (And Bridget finally does accept that perhaps she is at fault for Charli’s behavior so that at least makes Charli not just purely evil.)
Luke Omalza is also quite good as Hunter. He plays his puzzlement when Hannah doesn’t show up for their date well, and he seems like he’s going to be trouble but when Monica catches him and Charli chatting on the beach, he conveys that Hunter is completely terrified by Charli, trying to tell Monica the truth but snapping his mouth shut from Charli’s daggers look. And when he does talk to Monica, his admission about the diary and his feelings for Hannah feel totally genuine. Roy Lynam is also fine as Doug, always there to act as a buffer between Monica & David and the police, but loosing his cool a bit after David is attacked (and he never seems to know that Monica knows about his affair with Bridget).
Overall, To Catch a Cheater is a really good mystery that keeps you guessing until the end, and though it may be marred by some acting that isn’t quite up to snuff, it’s still extremely watchable and entertaining, especially for fans of Kate Watson, who really carries the film on her shoulders.
To Catch a Cheater has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.