The 15th film on my DVR was Stranger In The House, which premiered on the Lifetime Movie Network on April 10th.

Stranger In The House opens with a stab at relevance by including news reports of Wall Street bailouts and footage of Occupy protesters running around in their Guy Fawkes masks.  (Though I’m sure they would probably call them V For Vendetta masks.)  I have to admit that, when I first saw that footage, I was worried.  I didn’t know if I could particularly take a Lifetime version of The Big Short.

Fortunately, the rest of the film has nothing to do with any of that.  Instead, it’s a rather enjoyable and somewhat over-the-top Lifetime melodrama, one that makes no pretense of providing anything other than wonderfully sordid entertainment.

Super-rich businessman Wayne (John Novak) has been crippled in a car crash and, now confined to a wheelchair, he goes out of his way to make everyone else miserable.  He’s nearly impossible to live with and his daughter and chief caretaker, Jade (Emmanuelle Vaugier), desperately needs a vacation from him.  On top of that, she’s just married the handsome but somewhat mysterious Marco (Matthew McCaull) and they want to take their honeymoon.  So, jade hires a caretaker to look after Wayne while they’re gone.

At first, Wayne doesn’t much like his caretaker.  Sure, Samantha (Jordana Largy) may be attractive and enthusiastic but she’s into stuff like yoga and Wayne’s too cantankerous for all that.  However, we then get a five-minute montage in which we see Wayne slowly start to lower his defenses.  Soon, he and Samantha are smiling and laughing and kissing.  When Jade and Marco return, they are shocked by just how close Wayne and Samantha have become…

Then Wayne mentions that he and Samantha have gotten married and all Hell breaks loose.

Jade is convinced that Samantha only married Wayne for his money and she grows even more frustrated when Marco suggests that maybe she should give Samantha a chance.  Wayne certainly appears to be happy and he’s even washing his hair again!  But then one day, Wayne is found dead at the bottom of a cliff and it turns out that he’s left all of his money to Samantha!

Jade believes that Samantha murdered Wayne.  It doesn’t help that Samantha isn’t acting like a grieving widow.  Instead, she’s laughing and drinking and constantly complaining about having to wear black all the time.  If that’s not strange enough, Samantha and Marco seem to have suddenly grown very close.

How close?

Close enough that they’re ducking into a bedrooms and broom closets so that they can make out…

And that all happens in the first forty minutes!  Now, I’m not going to spoil the rest of the movie but I will say that this is one of those Lifetime movies where things just keep getting stranger and stranger.  In fact, it’s almost ludicrous how melodramatic things get but that’s why it’s fun!  This is one of those films that is so over-the-top and fun that you would have to be a real killjoy to complain about whether or not it actually makes any sense.

After all, logic really isn’t the point here.  Stranger In The House is all about style and that’s something that it definitely has.  This is a sleek, fun melodrama and one for which I would suggest keeping an eye out.