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Lifetime Movie Network’s ‘Sizzling Summer Nights’ continues with the maddening Trust Her If You Dare, which gets off on the wrong foot within the first two minutes with a blatant continuity error that sets the tone for the rest of the ‘mystery’ that will be nearly impossible to figure out — there’s never enough information for anyone to even wager a guess for this whodunit — and too much vague background information about the main character.
That character is a young woman named Sara (Jennings Rice), apparently a co-owner of a spa in Wilmington, NC (that has zero signage outside and looks more like a law office on the inside) with her boyfriend (?) Darren (Carlo Marks). She arrives at the spa one night for some reason, turns on the lights, hears something and goes to find out what it is … walking back into the now dark room that just had the lights on. Entering a room that looks like someone’s bedroom (is this a spa or a brothel?), she sees an apparent dead body on the floor and Darren’s keys on the bed. Fearing the worst, Sara gathers up her belongings and flees Wilmington, cuts up her ID and credit cards and produces a new ID that shows the name Felicity Reynolds … which is her real name. She beats a path to Atlanta in the hope of restarting her life, but she needs to find out what happened in Wilmington and enlists the help of her friend Olivia (Kennie Nicole Jenkins), who knows how to do some digging as she works in the financial world (it’s vague). She also reaches out to estranged sister Erin (Katelin Chesna), who really wants nothing to do with Felicity because something from their past nearly got Erin’s daughter Leighton (Angelique Valentine) killed. Erin relates the call to her husband Connor (Michael Stiggers), and Leighton overhears so she sneaks out that night and makes her way to the hotel where her auntie is staying, not to read her the riot act but to reconnect and bond.
Felicity is unaware that Darren has tracked her to Atlanta after finding a scrapbook she left behind that revealed her real name and the name of her sister. He calls Erin to try to explain what’s been going on and how he thought Felicity’s name was Sara and next thing you know he’s invited for dinner. Then Felicity shows up at her sister’s house and tries to explain the whole situation in Wilmington but they fear someone will track her to the house so she asks Erin if she can stay at their vacation home in the middle of nowhere. Erin insists on going with her, even though she and her family are supposed to leave for Paris the next day (hubby and daughter still go because it’s about Leighton getting accepted into a culinary school). Things get really awkward when Darren shows up for dinner, and Connor has to come up with a story that Erin suddenly took ill and dinner is off. Darren thinks this is suspicious so he drives away, turns around and parks across the street. Felicity and Erin leaves for the vacation house, completely missing the car parked directly across the street. Must have had a camouflage paint job because Darren even follows them to the ‘safe house’, parks about six feet away, and in broad daylight Erin still doesn’t notice even though she walks right past the car to get to her car to go to the store. This is Darren’ opportunity to confront Felicity, who by this time has been notified by Olivia that the dead person she saw in the spa was discovered in the woods, and he was into some shady financial stuff (he was apparently the money man for the spa, as well as for a restaurant owned by Darren’s friend Joshua) and it’s so dangerous that Olivia wants nothing more to do with helping Felicity. Darren proves that he was nowhere near the spa the night George was murdered and he is just as confused about things as she is. Joshua (Daniel Stine) keeps checking in with Darren from various nondescript locations (he always seems to be outside of a different building when he calls Darren) and Darren gives him Felicity’s phone number just in case he can’t be reached. That turned out to be a prophetic move because it’s not long before Darren is back in Wilmington and attacked at the spa by an unknown assailant (whose build looks like spa employee Britney), his phone destroyed. Felicity becomes concerned that she can’t reach Darren, she keeps assuring her mother that Olivia will come through, even though Olivia clearly said she was done helping, and when that help is not forthcoming she and Erin head to Olivia’s office to confront her in person (her office looks more like a spa, by the way) where Olivia reiterates she’s not helping. But Erin shames her into doing a little more digging. Felicity gets a call from Joshua because he can’t reach Darren either so he says that maybe he should meet up with her in Atlanta so they can put their heads together. It has to be noted that these people are flitting back and forth between Wilmington and Atlanta like they are around the corner from each other. It’s a more than six hour drive, but both Darren and Joshua are like ‘I’ll be right there.’ There is also another character involved in this mess, Ryan (Wilder Snow), who seems to be maybe an ex of Felicity or just a good friend. He does let her stay with him before she goes to her sister, and Darren shows up there but Ryan covers for her. The mysterious attacker also nearly kills him (or perhaps does die because we never see him after he’s injured and Felicity runs off). Olivia finally comes up with some big info about George — a lot of embezzling going on from both the spa and the restaurant, so Felicity isn’t sure who she can trust at this point. Will she be able to figure things out before she, and her sister, meet the same fate as George? Will we care?
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Moving forward, there will be the inevitable spoilers so proceed at your own risk.
Trust Her If You Dare is one of the more inept mysteries LMN has broadcast, so much so that they apparently couldn’t even get sponsors to buy ad time (my DVR’d version had zero commercials, which is very odd, and even where there were supposed to be commercials, there were none although the recording thought there were). Starting off with the continuity error with the lights was not a good sign, and it is never explained how the body of George got moved from the spa to the woods to be discovered by someone on a run. It’s also never explained just exactly what Felicity did in her past to cause her so much trouble that she would run away and change her identity. She also goes through the entire movie claiming to have witnessed a murder — which she did not. She saw a dead body and instead of calling Darren, she just decided to run away. Again, using the old ‘trouble always seems to find me’ rationale. Of course, she feared any police investigation into the murder would uncover her secrets and expose them to Darren, so running away and assuming her real identity was her only option. Right? There is also very little information given about Joshua. He just seems to be Darren’s friend, and we don’t learn about his ownership of a restaurant and his ties to George until much later in the movie, which makes it impossible to even consider that perhaps he was George’s killer and it was he who was dressed all in black and attacked Darren, despite having a completely different build than the attacker. It’s also a bit maddening when Olivia tells Felicity she’s done digging, Felicity telling her sister that Olivia isn’t helping but then telling her that Olivia is helping, which will almost certain cause you to yell at the TV, ‘She isn’t helping!’ (I confess, I said that every time Felicity said Olivia would find something.) The drive time between Wilmington and Atlanta will have you screaming at the TV as well. Sure, it makes sense that Felicity would want to get far away from her troubles in Atlanta, but you can’t logically have a story that requires the characters to travel back and forth more than once in a short amount of time, the worst one being when Joshua calls Felicity and he seems to arrive at the house in the woods a few minutes later. I mean he could have already been in Atlanta … be he’d just attacked Darren at the spa in Wilmington. And when Darren comes to, he suddenly pops up in Atlanta almost right behind Joshua. Perhaps there’s a stargate on I-20 I don’t know about. And what happens to Joshua in the end after Erin hits him in the head with a large wooden candle holder? Who knows because the story jumps ahead a month and there’s zero mention of him, just that Felicity and Darren are going to sell the spa in Wilmington and open a new one in Atlanta. This movie is one big plot hole. Do we blame writer Melissa Cassera or director Linden Ashby, who is better known as an actor on such shows as Melrose Place, Teen Wolf and The Young and the Restless? Or was it the production company or network? Was the movie chopped to pieces after it was completed, or did no one look at the script and say ‘this makes zero sense’? And who chose the law office location for the spa and the spa location for the accounting offices? Did no one look at the spaces and say, ‘Hmmm …’? And why can neither Felicity or Erin see Darren’s car when he’s parked basically right in front of their faces?!?!
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The actors, however, do the best they can with what they’re given. Usually you know who did it because the actor makes it obvious in their performance. So either Daniel Stine is an excellent actor who really knows how to give a believable performance, or he had no idea that he was going to be the culprit so he couldn’t act obvious. Jennings Rice also does a good job as Felicity, a woman who is determined to figure out what’s going on. She really does manage to carry the film and make you invested in her story, elevating the writing even when things make no sense. Carlo Marks has to play Darren in a state of perpetual confusion, and he at least does a decent job at that while also having to be the story’s red herring. Katelin Chesna is also fine as Erin but she gave off more of a motherly vibe than big sister. It was a shame the story sent Connor and Leighton off to Paris because Michael Stiggers and Angelique Valentine were really engaging actors. Kennie Nicole Jenkins and Wilder Snow, as Olivia and Ryan, do fine in their scenes although Jenkins seems to have been directed to play angry all the time and Snow is left hanging, with the audience never knowing if he survived his stab (or slash) wound, last seen looking at the tomato soup on his hand that is supposed to be blood.
Sadly for the cast, they are stuck in what ended up being a totally inept production. Was there more on the page than what ended up on screen? You almost have to believe there was because no one could have read that script as it was broadcast and said ‘sign me up’ (unless they really needed the money). Looking at the writer’s credits, though, you may begin to believe what was on screen was on the page because Cassera also ‘wrote’ LMN’s Snatched from the Crib, which I felt was at least partially written with the help of ChatGPT … and I would say the same about this one as well, because only an AI program could come up with something that seems to make sense but makes no sense when you actually produce it, and these cable networks don’t give anyone enough time or money to try to fix things after production has ended. In the end, Trust Her If You Dare has decent performances but the story and plot points that make no sense will try your patience.
Trust Her If You Dare has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.