(Lisa is currently in the process of trying to clean out her DVR by watching and reviewing all 40 of the movies that she recorded from the start of March to the end of June.  She’s trying to get it all done by July 11th!  Will she make it!?  Keep visiting the site to find out!)

The 26th film on my DVR was The Maid, which I recorded off of Lifetime on May 28th.

According to the imdb, The Maid is also known as A Housekeeper’s Revenge.  Regardless of which one you go with, both titles reveal this to be a Lifetime film.  That’s one thing that I always find interesting about Lifetime films — everyone always has a beautiful house and, naturally, everyone always has either a maid or a housekeeper.  I guess I find it interesting because very few of the people I know can afford to have a full-time maid, though I did once date this guy who was going to SMU where the school’s motto might as well be, “Our maid went to UT.”  When you get down to it, there are very few Lifetime films about poor people, unless the film is about somebody overcoming poverty so that they can go to Harvard or marry a professional athlete.

And I’m not complaining!  Lifetime is all about crowd-pleasing entertainment and, for the most part, we would all love to live in a big house with a great kitchen.  I know that most people would want to have a housekeeper or a maid.  Not me, though.  I like cleaning.

Anyway, in the case of this film, the maid is Colleen (Fay Masterson).  Colleen has just been hired to work for the Blackwell family!  Paul Blackwell (Lance Irwin) has just married a woman who is several years younger than him and, while they’re on their honeymoon, Paul’s angry, college student daughter, Laura (Kathryn Newton), has been left alone in the house with Colleen.  What could go wrong, right?

Well, a lot could go wrong.  If nothing went wrong, it would be a very boring movie.  Laura has had some trouble back at college.  Her boyfriend apparently got really possessive and then Laura started to receive threatening emails.  Even after returning home after her father’s wedding, strange things continue to happen.  Someone hacks into Laura’s Facerange (to use the Degrassi equivalent of Facebook) account and changes her password.  Someone is passing out flyers that announce that Laura’s a slut.  Her dog mysteriously disappears…

Could it be Laura’s ex or it could be … THE MAID!?

It turns out that Colleen has secrets of her own.  Her developmentally disabled son committed suicide, shortly after one of his high school classmates stood him up on a date.  Is it possible that Colleen is trying to destroy Laura?

Of course, it’s possible…

The Maid is pretty much a standard Lifetime film but that’s why I enjoyed it.  This is one of those totally over-the-top films where everyone is either bitter or crazy or both.  You won’t believe the plot for a second but you’ll be having so much fun with all the melodramatic twists and turns that it won’t matter.  Fay Masterson especially deserves a lot of credit for fully committing herself to playing the title character.  When she glares at the rich people that she’s planning on destroying, you never forget it.

And don’t worry,  It’s a made-for-TV movie so you know the dog’s going to be okay.