Lifetime
Lifetime has dished up another mystery thriller that right off the bat gives you Fatal Attraction vibes, but all is not as it seems, especially as you go through the movie and ask yourself, ‘Why is this called Wife Stalker since no wives are being stalked?’ More on that in a bit.
Note: Be advised that there will be spoilers in this review as it would be nearly impossible to discuss without revealing important plot points. Definitely watch the movie first. Proceed with caution!
Wife Stalker stars Rudy Huxtable herself, Keshia Knight Pulliam, as Joanna, a seemingly happy wife and mother who dotes on her kids and is a bit too obsessive about her husband Leo (Trai Byers), but she chalks that up to a troubled past in which he contemplated suicide. Leo is a lawyer and has to meet with a woman who will be a material witness in a divorce case he’s handling, and he is invited to her yoga studio to take a class and chat about the client. Joanne also convinces Leo to continue with a family tradition of a holiday open house which he agrees to, and the day of the party she notices Leo chatting on the porch with a beautiful woman who turns out to be the yoga instructor, Piper (Grace Byers). Pleasantries and small talk follow, but Piper makes an ‘Irish exit’, just giving a quick, subtle wave to Leo as she leaves. Joanna is suspicious and becomes even more concerned when Leo has a ‘business’ dinner with Piper, which leads to him going back to her place and not coming home until 3:30 in the morning.
It’s not long before Leo tells Joanna that it’s over between them and the situation advances at super sonic speed to the point that she is thrown out of the house and moves in with her mother — who fell down the steps and injured her foot so Joanna had already been staying with her to be her caretaker — with little contact with the children. One day in the park, Joanna is following Piper and she overhears a man call her a different name — Pamela — which sets off all of Joanna’s alarms. She asks the man about ‘Pamela’ and he relates the story of how the woman he thinks is Pamela lived in San Diego but disappeared after her husband and step-daughter died in a sailing accident with Pamela as the only survivor, and speculations that she murdered them. Joanna does more digging and finds out there was a previous husband who also suffered a tragic accident, and while he survived he seems to be in an irreversible coma, ‘living’ out his last days in the care of his mother. By this point you may be asking yourself if there is a pending divorce, why isn’t Joanna bringing all of this information to her lawyer. And why does Joanna not seem to have a lawyer? Rather, she continues sleuthing, contacting members of the victims’ families and at one point arranging a meeting with Piper’s mother, who we’ve already seen have a terse conversation in the phone, refusing to address her by that ‘ridiculous name’ Piper. But she flat out tells Joanna — who is clearly bothering her — that Pamela is capable of murder. More warning bells. And what’s worse — she finds out from daughter Evie that Piper is taking them all on a sailing trip that weekend, putting Joanna into ‘tiger mom’ mode to save her family, her actions leading to some shocking revelations that suddenly makes everything make sense. Because up to this point, it’s all a total head-scratcher.
So… let’s get into the nitty gritty of this movie. Again, spoilers will be unavoidable.
Lifetime
The opening scene of the movie gives us a glimpse of a woman’s hand dangling over the side of a bathtub, giving off those Fatal Attraction vibes since the movie is titled Wife Stalker. It’s obviously either the wife or the stalker who is dead in that tub just like Glenn Close oh so many years ago. We assume what follows is actually a flashback leading up to this moment but … it’s not. It is a moment from the past that will be revealed during the climax. And that climax will probably stun you when you realize this movie has not been a Fatal Attraction rip-off at all. It’s actually been a spin on … The Sixth Sense (minus the ghost). Everything we see happening in the movie is happening — Leo meets Piper, he begins a relationship with her, the kids don’t really like her, Joanna’s mom did hurt herself, Joanna is served with papers, Joanna does travel around the country (literally from San Diego to Annapolis and back home) talking to people involved with ‘Piper’, Piper’s real name is Pamela and there are victims in her wake. But … the Sixth Sense of it all is that Joanna is not Leo’s wife or mother to Evia and Aaron! She was Leo’s personal assistant who constructed an entire fantasy life with them after his wife died in the bathtub. And it wasn’t suicide or an accident, even though it seemed that it was. Yes, Joanna drowned the poor woman. And thinking back when all is revealed, you remember some of the clues that were dropped. You ask yourself near the end why Evie called Joanna by her name instead of ‘mom’. Then you have to think — did the kids ever call her mom? Why did Leo ask Joanna in a disapproving tone why she was wearing a particular dress? (It was his dead wife’s dress.) Why were the kids so distressed that movers were taking ‘mom’s chair’ out of the house? (It was really their mom’s chair.) As Joanna’s world comes tumbling down, it’s also revealed that what we thought were divorce papers were actually termination of service papers (which explains why she doesn’t have a divorce layer of her own). And when Joanna ends up in prison for attempting to murder Piper (she shoots her but not fatally) and tazering Leo, it’s her mother that has to remind her that she was never married to Leo and those children aren’t hers. And then the title suddenly makes sense! Joanna was the ‘wife stalker’! And then the movie gives us one more bit of juiciness when Joanna calls Piper from prison and their conversation basically reveals that Joanna was right about Piper the entire time, she does have plans to off the kids … and luckily Leo was secretly listening in on another phone (thank goodness they still had a landline). All of the crazy reveals near the end actually makes the movie better than you think it is while you’re watching it, because until then viewers are sure to think no one has any idea what they’re doing and the writer was on drugs because it barely makes sense to that point. Staying engaged actually makes it all the more rewarding when the reveals are made, much in the same way we were all surprised to find out Bruce Willis was a ghost the whole time.
Barbara Marshall’s screenplay does make everything make sense at the end, and it actually may require a rewatch to see all of the clues. (I’m still nagged by not realizing the kids never call Joanna ‘mom’.) There’s also always some distance between Leo and Joanna, which is written as they are just going through a rough patch because of his mental health issues (which, in hindsight, probably aren’t related to suicide but just depression over the death of his wife). The romance between Leo and Piper, though, does seem to advance quickly and it’s hard to tell how long they’ve actually known each other before he proposes to her, so that does make the story a bit confusing. It seems like a few days or weeks have gone by but it’s more like months. As a viewer, I was getting frustrated by the seemingly nonsensical plot points, but I was actually pleased by the end at how easily I was tricked into thinking the story was one thing when it was actually something completely different. Major kudos to Marshall for mostly pulling it off. Elisabeth Röhm also does a great job directing the film and keeping the secrets secret, dropping those subtle hints — if you’re actually paying attention — and giving a big payoff at the end. Also, there is one great jump scare when Joanna is visiting Pamela’s first husband, the one in the coma, that may have you jumping out of your seat. This is a movie that the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the work that went into it to fool the audience. It all pays off wonderfully.
The cast is also excellent. Pulliam makes Joanna seem like the completely devoted wife and mother, always looking out for Leo’s and the kids’ best interests. There isn’t one second of the movie that you don’t believe Joanna isn’t married to Leo. Pulliam just makes her performance so sincere that you never once doubt her. Trai Byers also does a great job with Leo, making him seem like a cad by so quickly dumping Joanna for Piper, again, never giving the impression that he and Joanna aren’t married. His relationship with Piper actually feels more romantic … and that may be because Piper is played by his real life wife, Grace Byers. She is terrific at making the romance with Leo feel authentic while she tries to juggle the emotions of the children with this new person in their life. She comes off as classy and assured, doing a great job at making us believe she is being victimized by Joanna … until that final scene on the phone when her admission to Joanna turns positively chilling. A terrific performance (and she gave off some Cush Jumbo vibes as well). Interestingly, in addition to the real life married couple, the children playing Evie and Aaron are also real-life siblings, Alayna Bernard and AJ Bernard. You can’t look at them and not see a resemblance, and they also look like they could be the children of Leo. They both do some good work as well, with Alayna getting more dialogue but they both do a good job at making us believe Joanna is their mother. Deja Dee is also good as Joanna’s mother who doesn’t like the way Leo treats her daughter and is really emotional as she visits Joanna in prison, trying to convince her that she made up that entire relationship. Really solid performances from the entire cast.
Wife Stalker was a movie that I, as a viewer, was initially thinking was the most illogical piece of nonsense Lifetime had ever broadcast — and as a critic I was prepared to award it a single star because of that — but it won me over at the end with the clever revelations, the skilled direction and the excellent cast, none of whom ever gave any of the story’s secrets away. If you watched the movie before reading this review, tell us in the comments what you thought about the story’s twists and turns.
Wife Stalker has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
Official Trailer | Wife Stalker
Lifetime