Lifetime
The desert is a dangerous place. Especially if you’re a character in a Lifetime TV movie! After treating viewers to a Nightmare in the Desert in September, the network ventures to the hottest place on Earth — Death Valley — with its latest thriller, Vanished in Death Valley. (The network is also enamored with the word ‘Vanished’ this week.)
The movie begins in the recent past as a family decides to go for a hike in the desert … except Dad does not want to be involved in the Mother-Daughter drama unfolding in front of him so he lets the two of them head off by themselves (with no water as Mom hands him her bottle before they start the hike). Mom and Daughter bicker about Daughter wanting to explore an old borax mine, Mom says its dangerous but Daughter insists and Mom tells her to do what she wants, she’s had it. Daughter does what she wants and falls down a mine shaft, breaking her neck. Well, that’ll teach her.
Some indeterminate time later (I believe it is mentioned much later in the movie) another family is driving through the desert, leaving their Indiana home for the big city of San Francisco as mom Kayla has accepted the opportunity of a lifetime with her job. Neither husband Alan or daughter Hope are thrilled about the move, and Hope is especially belligerent about leaving her friends and having to go to a new school. During a stop at a tourist trap ‘antique store’ in the middle of the desert, Kayla and Hope have words about a souvenir Hope wants to buy — a Death Valley shot glass. Kayla refuses because it’s a shot glass, while the weird, robotic woman working the shop, Lydia, watches. After Kayla exits, Lydia approaches Hope and offers her the shot glass as a gift because her mother is such an awful, hateful person who doesn’t deserve a daughter like Hope. Yes, Lydia is the Mother from the start of the movie so she is still deeply grieving the loss of her daughter … and now believes she has found a way to bring her back — kidnap Hope, or rather ‘rescue’ her from her awful, undeserving mother. Lydia advises the family to fill up on coolant for their car at the shop just down the road, and they take her advice. Turns out her husband Eli is the owner of the shop, and she calls him to beg him to not let them leave Death Valley because she has a plan. Eli is not in on the plan at first, but Lydia guilts him into it and once everything is in motion he is all in, doing whatever it is Lydia wants. So he fills the coolant but cuts a hose so that when they leave the car breaks down not far from the small town. Hope and Kayla bicker more and Hope walks back to the town, with Kayla frustratingly telling her to do whatever she wants (at least she isn’t going into the desert to explore a mine). As luck would have it, Eli has gotten a call to come tow the car but on the way he stumbles across Hope heading into the convenience store. Acting more than a little abductie, Eli does all he can to lure Hope into his truck but when she tries to outrun him, he grabs her and takes her back to the shop where he seems to have a secret room all ready for any such abductions. Kayla and Alan feel stranded now as Eli never arrives and they get a tow from Deb, an annoyingly upbeat woman who knows everyone’s business in town … and happens to be Lydia’s mother (which Kayla and Alan don’t learn until near the film’s climax). Kayla insists to anyone who will listen that Hope was abducted, but the sheriff thinks she’s just wandered off and will show up (even though wandering off in the desert doesn’t usually end up with someone just showing up) so not to worry. Kayla refuses to take any of this sitting down and wants to wander into the desert herself, and Lydia shows up at her motel and tells her she saw Hope wander off into the desert with a group of kids to check out the very dangerous borax mines, so they need to go now, don’t call your husband and definitely don’t call the police. Surprisingly, Kayla finds Lydia’s story and demeanor totally suss, especially when Eli answers Alan’s phone and says Alan has been taken care of. What’s a mom to do? Can Kayla trust anyone in town to help her find her family, or are they all in cahoots to help Lydia and Eli restore their own family even if it means kidnapping and murder?
Vanished in Death Valley isn’t the worst desert-set movie Lifetime has presented, much better than the ridiculously absurd Nightmare in the Desert, but even at 90-minutes it feels a bit too long. The story construction does work though, giving Lydia a clear and rational (to her) motive for taking Hope, always believing that Kayla hates her daughter and vice versa (because Hope plays along just to make sure no one gets hurt). Eli’s ‘I’ll do whatever my wife asks no matter how outlandish and illegal’ is just a convenient plot point because he seems level-headed at first about not wanting to do something illegal but once Lydia looks into his soul with her dead eyes he can’t help but obey. The family dynamic with Kayla, Hope and Alan also feels relatable. Unfortunately, the sheriff is written as someone who seems to be bothered by having to do his job and search for a young girl, and Deb is too overly chipper when she can clearly see Kayla and Alan are going through things. Do we blame the actors for making these choices, the writers, or the director for not giving them a little guidance on how to relate to the characters and the situations? That being said, the story and direction do build suspense throughout the movie but it just takes a little too long to get where it’s going.
Lifetime
The cast, though, is what makes the movie watchable … though perhaps not in the way the filmmakers intended. Aryè Campos is very good as Kayla, perfectly portraying a frustrated mom with a teenage girl who thinks she knows it all, as most teens do. She vents her frustrations on Hope, and Alan sometimes, but she’s also carrying a burden of being the one who is responsible for uprooting the family, and her guilt over that only makes her ‘Tiger Mom’ instincts kick in harder when she feels she’s not being heard by anyone as she insists her daughter was taken (Hope smartly dropped her favorite bracelet in the convenience store parking lot when she was taken as a message to her mother, yet the sheriff still thinks it just fell off and means nothing). Campos really does give a very nice performance of a mom in distress and determined to bring back her lost daughter. Matthew Pohlkamp really doesn’t get to do a lot as father Alan, taking a backseat to Campos for most of the movie. Ava Bianchi also does a nice job as Hope, being that insufferable teen at first, but also showing that she is a smart cookie when Eli confronts her, and wisely playing along with Lydia to try to get herself out of the dire situation she’s facing, at one point offering to go with Lydia and Eli just to protect her parents. Dwayne Tarver’s Sheriff Marker is pretty useless. Patrick Scott Lewis starts off as a rational person when Eli is first introduced, but he just devolves into Lydia’s goon, willing to go so far as to commit murder — with dynamite! — so they can run away with Hope. Lisa Long’s Deb does not seem to be able to read a room with her constantly sunny disposition, and it’s almost hard to believe her when she says she had no idea what her daughter was up to, even though she did have no idea.
The ‘highlight’ of the movie, though, is Katherine Joan Taylor as Lydia. Unfortunately, she is the highlight for all the wrong reasons. She just comes off as weird right from the start, with a face that barely shows any different expressions save for baring her teeth, often walking, standing or running with her arms straight down by her sides. She is a bit unhinged when she concocts her plan to take Hope and she goes completely over the edge when she tries to lure Kayla into the desert. In most movies like this, the person being confronted usually drops everything and goes off with the person we all know is up to no good, but Taylor’s acting style makes it clear that Lydia is off her rocker and not even the dumbest character in the movie would believe what she’s saying. It’s not a good performance by any means, completely lacking any hints of subtlety, but you also can’t tear your eyes away from that nearly immobile face whenever Taylor is on screen. She makes this watchable for all the wrong reasons.
The performances in Vanished in Death Valley run the full gamut from pretty good to utterly bizarre, and while the story drags a bit the whole thing is still entertaining enough … if you happen to be snowed in somewhere.
Vanished in Death Valley has a run time of 1 hour 29 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
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