October Positivity: Beckman (dir by Gabriel Sabloff)

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2020’s Beckman is one of the most violent faith-based films I’ve ever seen.

Usually, when a religious film is full of death and violence, it’s apocalypse-themed. The rapture has happened. The Anti-Christ is in power. All bets are off. Beckman, however, is not an apocalypse-themed film. Instead, it’s a John Wick rip-off, one in which the Wick-character also happens to be a preacher.

David A.R. White plays Beckman, a former contract killer who stumbled into a church and meets Rev. Philip (Jeff Fahey). Philip converts Beckman, baptizing him and showing him that even a viscous killer can be redeemed. (A Vietnam vet, Philip killed eleven people during the war and it still haunts his nightmares. Incidentally, Jeff Fahey deserves roles in better movies.) When Philip grows sick and dies, Beckman takes over as the church’s pastor. When Philip’s runaway niece, Tabitha (Brighton Sharbino), shows up at the church, Beckman adopts her as his daughter.

One year later, all Hell breaks loose. Gunmen working for rich cult leader Reese (William Baldwin, looking like someone cosplaying Alec for Halloween) storm the church and they kidnap Tabitha. Beckman snaps. He goes back to his old ways, leaving a trail of bodies throughout Los Angeles as he searches for Tabitha. The film becomes a cross of Taken and John Wick with a religious angle tossed in as well. Beckman kills but he constantly hears a voice in the back of his head telling him that he needs to reject his anger.

Beckman does indeed kill a lot of people and I have to admit that it bothered me a bit, just how casual the film got about killing. It made the film’s ending, with Beckman suddenly realizing that he doesn’t need to kill everyone, feel rather hollow. Reese is an Jeff Epstein-like madman who kidnaps teenage girls and makes them a part of his cult. He associates with human traffickers. And yet, when Beckman has a chance to kill him, Beckman suddenly realizes that he doesn’t want to lower himself to Reese’s level. Okay, what about all the people Beckman killed beforehand? I mean, if you’ve already killed 12 people, you might as well take out the worst of them all.

(It reminded me a bit of how Cecil B. DeMille would always be sure to include plenty of sin in the first half of his films so that audiences could enjoy themselves before the second half became all about chastity and redemption. The film portrays a countless number of deaths but still wants its message to be Thou Shalt Not Kill. It feels a bit hypocritical.)

Beckman takes a lot of its cues from John Wick and there are a few effective fight scenes. The film is also divided into chapters and there’s a lot of time jumps, showing that the filmmakers have, at the very least, seen at least one Tarantino film. But the film itself lacks the self-aware humor and the shameless style that made the John Wick films memorable. David A.R. White is not a bad actor but he’s better at light comedy than at killing people. The film ends with what appears to be the promise of a sequel but I’m not sure how many more people Beckman can kill while still claiming to be a preacher.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Pacific Blue 3.3 “Rave On”

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing Pacific Blue, a cop show that aired from 1996 to 2000 on the USA Network! It’s currently streaming everywhere, though I’m watching it on Tubi.

This week, the bike cops go undercover and essentially end up looking like a bunch of cops working undercover.

Episode 3.3 “Rave On”

(Dir by Michael Levine, originally aired on August 17, 1997)

The bike cops go undercover!

If that’s not funny enough, they go undercover as ravers.

I swear, you haven’t really laughed until you’ve laughed at the sight of the extremely stiff stars of Pacific Blue hanging out at a rave and giving each other secret signals whenever they spot anyone doing drugs. Chris’s drink gets roofied and, as someone who has experienced that in real life, I appreciated that the show was trying to warn its viewers about leaving their drinks unattended. Seriously, if my friends hadn’t been looking out for me that night, it scares me to think about what probably would have happened. Still, good intentions can’t disguise just how unconvincing Darlene Vogel’s performance was.

Palermo spends this entire episode saying that the parents of teens who go to raves and take drugs should be prosecuted and jailed. Then Palermo discovers that his sixteen year-old daughter (Johna Stewart-Boden) has been attending raves and, while she hasn’t intentionally taken any drugs, she’s stood by while her friends have. Palermo does not arrest himself. He does not throw himself in jail. He does not look in the mirror and smirk and say, “Oh yeah, buddy, your parent-of-the-year.” In other words, Lt. Palermo is a big, freaking hypocrite.

The bike cops break up the rave scene but the music will never die.

Horror On TV: The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (dir by Sid Smith)

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Tonight, from 1976, we have The Paul Lynde Halloween Special.

In this special, actor and comedian Paul Lynde celebrates Halloween with Betty White, KISS, Donny and Marie Osmond, Florence Henderson, Billy Barty, Margaret Hamilton (the original Wicked Witch of the West), and I’m going to guess a mountain of cocaine that was probably sitting backstage.

This special is definitely a product of a very certain era in America’s cultural history.

The Eric Roberts Horror Collection: Space Sharks (dir by Dustin Ferguson)

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Odd film, Space Sharks.

This 2024 movie imagines what would happen if a bunch of …. well, space sharks …. were developed by a group of mad scientists in a space station and then were sent down to Earth where they were invisible except for when they bit someone’s head off. This is one of those films where new characters are continually introduced, just to be killed a few minutes later. There’s a subplot about a bunch of former drug addicts taking a hike through the wilderness which leads to some of them getting space sharked.

On the one hand, the movie is pretty bad. Even though it’s only 70 minutes (and about 15 of those minutes is taken up with the opening and the end credits), it moves extremely slowly. The plot never makes any sense. The special effects aren’t very special. The Space Sharks are a lot more impressive on the poster than in the actual movie. In fact, the poster has absolutely nothing to do with the actual movie. You get the idea.

On the other hand, as is so often the case with low-budget horror films, it’s hard not to be fascinated by the dedication that was put into making such a bad movie. There’s an undeniable charm to these DIY productions. At least, there is for me. This film has “Wow, someone actually made this!” appeal to it. Your mileage may vary. What director Dustin Ferguson has done here — coming up with a great title and then making a mediocre film — is what we regularly praise Roger Corman, Sam Arkoff, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and William Castle for doing.

The movie also has a surprisingly effective synth score and Eric Roberts! Eric is in the film for maybe two minutes and, in the role of a random scientist on the space station, he’s playing a minor character that any actor could have played. But who cares? It’s Eric Roberts!

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Brad reviews NEXT DOOR (1994), a “neighbor from Hell” film starring James Woods and Randy Quaid!

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Bradley Crain

*This sitcom looking picture is not a good indicator of the dark places this movie will go!*

NEXT DOOR (1994) is a dark suburban satire that introduces us to college professor Matt Coler (James Woods), his lovely wife Karen (Kate Capshaw), and their son Bucky, who have recently moved out to the suburbs. As the movie begins, Matt, Karen and even Bucky seem to be slightly obsessing over their next-door neighbors, Lenny and Marci Benedetti (Randy Quaid and Lucinda Jenney). For one, Lenny and Marci enjoy engaging in sexual intercourse on their backyard lawn furniture within view of each of the Coler family members. That’s quite awkward, but more irritatingly, Lenny insists on constantly watering his front yard near Matt’s property, which is having an extremely damaging effect on Matt and Karen’s beloved azaleas. Invited over to the Benedetti’s house for a cookout, Matt and Karen hope to get to know their neighbors a little better, as well as make a polite request of Lenny to not water the area near the boundary of their yards quite so much. We soon find out that Lenny, who works at the local meat packing plant, is loud, obnoxious, smarter than he looks, and seems to have a really big chip on his shoulder towards Matt, who he doesn’t see as being much of a man. He even tells Karen that her husband is a child, and that’s why he went into teaching rather than getting “a real job.” This upsets Karen so she tells Matt it’s time to leave, but before going, they ask Lenny not to water the part of his yard near their flowers so much. That night, Lenny moves the sprinkler even closer to Matt’s yard, which puts the final death knell in the azaleas. Very annoyed, but not wanting to go too far, Matt gets even by spraying Lenny’s outdoor patio furniture with a lot of water as a prank. Lenny doesn’t handle Matt’s prank very well, and this is where things begin getting out of hand, igniting a full-blown feud between the two men. Soon the annoyances of wet furniture and dead flowers give way to outright horror involving poisoned family pets, police investigations, attempted sexual assault, and even attempted murder!

NEXT DOOR, which is a made for Showtime original, starts out as an amusing and entertaining film involving innocent pranks between James Woods’ meek teacher and Randy Quaid’s boorish butcher. As the intensity of the feud picks up between the men, and the retaliations become more and more sinister, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor as it goes to places that aren’t funny at all. The story seems to be trying to make a statement about the class divide, the survival of the fittest, and the danger that lurks behind the picket fences and in the backyards of the innocent looking neighborhoods around us. It does that job well, as I certainly sensed the real danger that the more “civilized” man found himself in when he came up against a man who didn’t really concern himself with societal norms. I have to give a lot of credit to Randy Quaid’s performance as Lenny for making me feel that way. He is simply a force of nature, and his portrayal of the beer guzzling, opinionated, blue collar bully is excellent in its unhingement! Sadly, I’ve known quite a few people who acted way too much like Lenny for my comfort. James Woods is also excellent as the somewhat timid, intelligent college professor who keeps thinking he can talk his way out of this predicament. We know how intense James Woods can be in his best roles, but he’s quite different here as the man who tries to remain reasonable until the very end of the film when he’s finally forced to take a stand for his family’s safety. He doesn’t have the showy role here, but I can definitely identify with his character, as that would be me in this situation. Kate Capshaw and Lucinda Jenney are both appealing as the suffering wives, providing some good support and wit to the proceedings, but this show belongs to the men.

NEXT DOOR is a true horror film as far as I’m concerned, because if I found myself in this kind of situation with my own neighbor, I would consider it a nightmare. There have been a couple of times in my own life where I have found myself in situations with a neighbor that made me uncomfortable. One of those times involved our next-door neighbor driving across the boundary between their yard and ours and then taking our driveway out to the main road instead of using their own, less maintained driveway. This really bothered my wife as they had never asked if they could do it, and it had practically made a “path” that looked like a road at the boundary. Since it bothered my wife, we ended up having a polite conversation with our neighbors, they understood our concerns, and we worked out a plan that worked for all of us. A different time, however, one of our neighbors across the road left their pitbull out and it attacked our small dog in our own yard. It almost killed our dog, requiring her to have emergency surgery from our veterinarian to save her leg, and it also led to high vet bills. Our neighbors refused to discuss the situation with us, and being from West Virginia, my wife wanted us to take the situation to more extreme levels, including getting local law enforcement involved. In a situation like this, you have to truly consider how far you want to take a situation and then be prepared for the whatever events could follow. There’s a lot of unknown, and it’s pretty scary to be honest with you.

Ultimately, I would have to admit that I didn’t really enjoy NEXT DOOR very much, but I did find it fascinating. I appreciated the great performances of Woods and Quaid, but the movie made me very uncomfortable. If my discomfort was director Tony Bill’s (MY BODYGUARD, FIVE CORNERS, FLYBOYS) goal, it certainly worked. I just think that the farcical nature of the black humor at the beginning didn’t quite mesh with the dark and disturbing elements at the end. Or maybe it just took me places I wasn’t really prepared to go. Either way, it’s still an interesting relic of the 90’s made-for-premium-cable-TV movie. You never knew where those movies were headed! If you’re interested, as of this writing, it’s available for streaming on Tubi.

The Dodgers and the Blue Jays Are Going To The World Series

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Dazzling Erin

Last night was terrifying! I was watching the Mariner/Blue Jays game and the Mariners were ahead. They seemed like the had the game wrapped up. I was so confident that the Mariners would be winning the ALCS and keeping Toronto out of the World Series that I stopped watching the game and instead, I joined Lisa, Jeff, Brad, and the rest of the Monday Mania crew in watching The Wrong Boy Next Door.

About 45 minutes into the movie, I glanced at my phone to check on the game.

The Blue Jays were ahead.

No, I wanted to shout, what are you doing, Seattle!?

The Blue Jays went on to win the ALCS and now, they’ll be facing the Dodgers in the World Series. And while I may not like the Blue Jays, I have to congratulate them. They came from behind in both the game and the series and they won. That’s what a good baseball team does.

So. congratulations, Blue Jays. And, when the series begins on the 24th, let’s go Dodgers!

Seattle, I’m never going to depend on you for anything ever again.

Also, if you guys could wrap up the World Series before Halloween rolls around, I’d appreciate it. Thanks!

Doctor Who — The Invisible Enemy, Image of the Fendahl, The Sun Makers, Underworld, The Invasion of Time

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Having survived the Horror of Fang Rock, the Doctor and Leela resumed traveling through space and time. Along the way, they picked up a new companion named K-9. Here is the rest of the fifteenth century, which began in a British lighthouse and ended on Gallifrey.

The Invisible Enemy (1977, directed by Derrick Goodwin)

This the one where K-9 makes his first appearance.

As a story, The Invisible Enemy is no great shakes. The Doctor (Tom Baker) and Leela (Louise Jameson) materialize on a spaceship that has been infected by a sentient virus. Everyone, except for Leela, gets infected. The virus wants the Doctor to lead an infection of the entire universe. When the virus orders the Doctor to kill Leela, he breaks free from its control. He and Leela go to a space medical center, where Prof. Marinus (Frederick Jaeger) uses Leela’s natural immunity to help create a cure for the virus. At one point, the Doctor and Leela are cloned and the clones are injected into the Doctor to fight the virus. It’s a fantastic voyage for all.

Prof. Marinus’s assistant is a boxy robot dog named K-9 (voice by John Leeson). Since Marinus has to go back to Earth, he gives K-9 to The Doctor and Leela as a gift.

How you feel about K-9 says a lot about how you will feel about the remainder of Tom Baker’s time as the Doctor. Some fans consider the introduction of K-9 to be the show’s jump the shark moment. A lot more, myself included, have always liked K-9 and view him — along with the sonic screwdriver — as being an essential part of the original show’s charm. Love him or hate him, K-9, who come figure out any puzzle and who could shoot a loser from his nose, became one of the most recognizable symbols of the Tom Baker years.

Image of the Fendahl (1977, Directed by George-Spenton Foster)

The Doctor and Leela are drawn back to modern-day Earth, where scientists, witches, and cultists are all being influenced by skull that is estimated to be at least twelve million years old. The scientists assume that the skull is human but actually, it’s the skull of a Fendahl, a race of psychic vampires who developed on the legendary “Fifth Planet.” The Time Lords tried to destroy the Fendahl but one escaped in the form of a skull. It first killed all the life on Mars. (But what about the Ice Warriors and the Pyramids? Doctor Who continuity rarely added up.) Then it landed on Earth, where it influenced human evolution to create a race that it could use to its own advantage.

Image of the Fendahl feels like a spiritual descendant of The Daemons, with the same emphasis on rural British atmosphere and paganism (Leela teams up with a white witch) but without the assurance of UNIT waiting on the sidelines to take care of the threat. Image of the Fendahl, with its suggestion that humanity was specifically developed to be food, is considerably darker than The Daemons and Tom Baker, so often criticized for playing up the humor of the Doctor’s character, gives one of his more serious performances. When one of the scientists who has been possessed by Fendahl seeks to kill himself and bring an end to the threat, the Doctor hands him a gun.

Image of the Fendahl is yet another Doctor Who serial in which the main threat is revealed be the result of the Time Lords meddling. The Fourth Doctor spent a lot of time cleaning up Gallifrey’s messes.

The Sun Makers (1977, directed by Pennant Roberts)

The Doctor, Leela, and K-9 materialize on Pluto, where they discover that colonists and workers are expected to pay exorbitant taxes to the Company or risk being exiled to the Undercity. The Company’s tax collector is the Controller, who turns out to be a quivering mass of seaweed.

The Sun Makers is Doctor Who at its most satirical, poking fun at the British tax system. Apparently, the original script was much more pointed in its attacks on the Inland Revenue services but the BBC, being the BBC, demanded that the script be watered down. In human form, the Controller still clearly resembles Denis Healey, the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The Sun Makers is Doctor Who at its most straight-forward, an enjoyable diversion from the more serious episodes.

Underworld (1978, directed by Norman Stewart)

The TARDIS materializes on the R1C, a spaceship that has been on a millennia-long quest to find a missing ship that was on its away to Minyos 2 and which contained the genetic files of the original Minyans who lived on Minyos 1.

This is another story where the Doctor has to deal with the bad decisions of the Time Lords. Before adapting their policy of non-intervention, the Time Lords meddles in Minyan evolution and the end result was that the Minyans viewed the Time Lords as gods and the Minyans also used all of the Time Lord technology that they had been given to fight a civil war. The Doctor feels a responsibility to help the crew of R1C complete their quest.

The R1C eventually ends up going through a space nebula and crashing into a planetoid, where they discover the ship they were searching for. The crew of the ship is being used as slaves by the Oracle, a super computer.

Underworld is one of the more boring of the Fourth Doctor’s serials. The story feels slapdash and the idea of a supercomputer was a well that the Doctor Who had already gone to far too many times.

The Invasion of Time (1978, directed by Gerald Blake)

The Doctor returns to Gallifrey and assumes his position as President of the Time Lords. He also seems to go through a total personality change, exiling Leela and announcing that a group of psychic aliens known as the Vardans will be the new masters of Gallifrey.

Leela, even after being exiled, is convinced that this is all a part of some plan on the Doctor’s part and it turns out that she’s right. The Doctor is only pretending to be allied with the Vardans so that he can discover the location of their planet and put them into a time loop. What the Doctor does not realize is that the Vardans are themselves being used by the Sontarans, who are planning on invading Gallifrey.

In retrospect, it seems inevitable that the 15th season would end on Gallifrey. It also seems inevitable that the Sontarans would eventually try to invade Gallifrey. The main threat of the Sontarans has always been that they are so stupid that they will try to invade any planet. The most surprising thing about this serial is that Leela stays behind on Gallifrey so that she can marry Andred (Chris Tanchrell), the head of the Citadel Guard. The idea of Leela living with the Time Lords has been responsible for a lot of fan fiction and it does seem unfortunate that the show didn’t do more with the idea.

Louise Jameson had already decided to leave the show and originally, Leela was to die while fighting the Sontarans. This was changed because it was felt Leela’s death would be too traumatic for younger viewers. Instead, the younger viewers were traumatized by K-9 announcing that he would be staying on Gallifrey with Leela and Andred. Luckily, for them, the final shot of the fifteen season was The Doctor looking at a crate labeled “K-9 Mark II” and smiling.

Little did the Doctor suspect that the quest for the Key of Time was waiting in his future.

Retro Television Review: Fantasy Island 7.15 “Dark Secret/The Outrageous Mr. Smith”

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Tuesdays, I will be reviewing the original Fantasy Island, which ran on ABC from 1977 to 1984. The show is once again on Tubi!

“Smiles, everyone, smiles!”

Episode 7.15 “Dark Secret/The Outrageous Mr. Smith”

(Dir by Don Weis, originally aired on March 3rd, 1984)

Eh. I didn’t like this episode. Sorry, Mr. Roarke, no smiles today.

Robert Smith (Engelbert Humperdinck) wants to be a singing star but he suffers from stage fright. He’s created a smarmy alter ego who doesn’t have stage fright but he wants to be able to perform on his own, without having to retreat into a fantasy world. His alter ego responds by coming to life and sleeping with Robert’s wife (Elaine Joyce). Personally, if I was the writer of this episode, I would have just ended the story right there but it turns out that Robert’s alter ego only exists in his mind. His wife walks in on Robert yelling at himself and is overjoyed to discover that Robert has finally found the confidence to perform on stage.

Just typing all of that made my head hurt.

Meanwhile, Amy Marshall (Markie Post) is married to Christopher (Larry Wilcox) but their marriage is troubles because Amy has never told Christopher that she was raped just a few days before the wedding. She never reported the rape to the police and she’s never dealt with the trauma that she still carries with her. This is a very sensitive subject so, of course, Fantasy Island screws it up by suggesting that Amy is somehow to blame for all of the trouble in the marriage because she didn’t tell Christopher about what happened. Amy worries that Christopher will leave her if he finds out. Christopher does find out and he gets mad at her for not telling him and threatens to leave, not only proving Amy’s point but also suggesting, to me, that their marriage isn’t really worth saving. Amy deserves someone better than a guy whose response to hearing that his wife got raped is to get mad at her. Then Amy’s rapist (Michael Callan) shows up on the island and attacks her again. Amy fights back and is on the verge of stabbing the bastard to death when Mr. Roarke shows up and removes the knife from her hand and instead has the Fantasy Island police take the guy away. Christopher and Amy leave the Island, their marriage stronger than ever.

Meanwhile, I had to stop myself from throwing something at the television. First off, the story suggests that somehow Amy is to blame for not telling Christopher about what happened but Christopher’s reaction showed exactly why she didn’t tell him and it also showed that Amy’s best option would have been to get a divorce. Then the show suggests that the best way to give Amy her fantasy of finding freedom from her trauma was to have the rapist nearly rape her again! Mr. Roarke, at one point, states that Amy’s safety is his number one concern and that he has his entire police force looking for the rapist. But Roarke has already been established as having God-like powers so if Roarke wanted to find the guy before he attacked Amy, he certainly could have.

As well, what is the deal with all of these criminals and assorted lowlifes making it to the Island in the first place? Mr. Roarke often brags about running a background check on everyone who comes to the Island, which again suggests that no one comes to Fantasy Island unless Roarke wants them there. So, why are there so many terrible people on the Island?

This episode …. ugh.

Horror Scenes That I Love: The Dance From Prom Night

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror scene that I love comes from one of the greatest of the Canadian slasher films, 1980’s Prom Night!

Remember everyone …. Prom Night! Everything is alright!

October True Crime: The Stalking of Laurie Show (dir by Norma Bailey)

Posted on October 21, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2000’s The Stalking of Laurie Show takes place in Pennsylvania, a wonderful state as long as you don’t count Philadelphia. Even more specifically, the film takes place in Pennsylvania Dutch country. An Amish man occasionally appears, sitting in his buggy when it moves down the road. One character, a lunkhead named Butch (Rel Hunt), goes to an Amish coffeeshop while his girlfriend is committing a horrific murder.

The Amish don’t play a huge role in The Stalking of Laurie Show, which is ultimately a story of a murder amongst high school students. Still, seeing them in the background is a reminder of a simpler life and also a reminder that not everyone is consumed by hate. That’s a welcome reminder because this film, much like our present world, is full of irrational hate.

Michelle Lambert (Marnette Patterson) is, at least when the film starts, the queen of her high school. Everyone wants to be her friend and everyone fears getting on her bad side. She’s a master manipulator, someone who obviously feels that she has the right to take whatever she wants. And yet, when we first meet her, it’s hard not to feel at least a little sympathy for her. Her homelife isn’t the best. She doesn’t get along with her father. She’s very protective of her younger siblings. Despite appearances, she’s not rich. The only reasons she has expensive clothes and makeup is because she’s very good at shoplifting. When I was a teenager, I was very good at shoplifting too so I could …. well, I don’t want to say that I related to her because there is a difference between pocketing purple eyeshadow and stealing an entire wardrobe. As well, it soon becomes clear that Michelle has a mean streak that no amount of a bad family life could justify.

Michelle takes a new student, innocent Laurie Show (Jennifer Finnigan) under her wing and, for a while, she and Laurie are best friends. But then, when Michelle’s lunkhead boyfriend Butch takes an interest in Laurie, things change. Michelle is fiercely jealous of Butch and soon, Michelle and her friends are conspiring on ways to humiliate Laurie. When Michelle gets pregnant, she drops out of school, moves into a trailer with Butch, and eventually alienates almost all of her friends after she attacks Laurie in a bowling alley parking lot. Only Tabitha (Joanne Vannicola) remains loyal to Michelle. Soon Tabitha and Michelle are plotting Laurie’s death….

Agck! It’s a disturbing story, especially since it’s true. Michelle and Tabitha murdered Laurie Snow in December of 1991, just five days before Christmas. (There’s some debate as to whether or not Butch took part in the actual murder or not.) Michelle is currently in prison while Tabitha, a juvenile at the time of the murder, was paroled in 2019. Today, of course, Michelle and her friends would have hounded Laurie online, sending her anonymous messages, filming every fight between the two of them, and telling her to “kill yourself.” Every time I read about a teenager who committed suicide due to cyberbullying, my immediate response is that they didn’t kill themselves. They were murdered. Anyone who would taunt a fragile person to the point of suicide is as guilty as if they pulled the trigger or tightened the noose themselves. And don’t give me any of that, “They didn’t know it would happen” crap either. In every case, they knew what they were doing.

As for the film itself, it’s definitely sensationalized. Marnette Patterson fully embraces the melodrama as Michelle, at first playing her as just being a standard mean girl before then going totally over-the-top as Michelle’s grip on reality becomes more and more loose. Jennifer Finnigan is sympathetic as Laurie and Jessica Greco gives a good performance as a friend of Laurie’s who is also drawn into Michelle’s crowd. If the film wasn’t based on a true story, it would probably be a camp classic. But since it is based on a true story, it works best as a plea for people to stop turning a blind eye to bullying. That’s not a bad message.