Andreas Damm | Through the Shattered Lens

The latest Lifetime “true crime” movie goes a little something like this:

We start with a clip from a South African news program. The anchorman talks about how much everyone loves Oscar Pistorius, the man who lost his legs when he was 11 months old and then went to compete in both the Paralympics and the Olympics. In both his home country and abroad, Oscar is known as the Blade Runner.

Cut to:

Oscar Pistorius (played by Andreas Damm) running across South Africa. A man in a pickup truck honks at him. Oscar holds up his hand in greeting. A group of children stop playing soccer long enough to watch Oscar run by. No matter what, Oscar never stops running.

Cut to:

Oscar in his kitchen, on the day before Thanksgiving. A title card tell us that we are seeing “the day before Reeva’s death.” Reeva Steenkamp (Toni Garrn) is Oscar’s girlfriend and a model. They talk, they laugh, they make love on a kitchen counter. It seems like the perfect relationship.

Cut to:

Night. The outside of Oscar’s house. There are gunshots. Reeva screams for help. Oscar shouts “No!”

Cut to:

The morning after Reeva’s death and Oscar telling the police how he accidentally killed his girlfriend.

Cut to:

A few months before Reeva’s death. Reeva tells her mother that she wants to move in with Oscar.

Cut to:

A few more months before Reeva’s death. Reeva meets Oscar Pistorius and, for Oscar, it’s obsession at first sight.

And so the movie goes from there, hopping back and forth through time and telling the story of Oscar and Reeva’s ill-fated relationship. Oscar turns out to be jealous and controlling. Reeva is always a bit too quick to accept the blame for all of Oscar’s tantrums. Oscar confesses to her that he’s always felt like he’s been alone in the world. Reeva’s friends tell her that they think Oscar is creepy. Reeva says that they don’t know him the way that she does. Reeva mentions that she smoked weed while doing a shoot in Jamaica. Oscar totally freaks out, as if he simply cannot believe that someone would smoke weed while in Jamaica. (I mean, wouldn’t it be rude not to?)

And eventually, it all leads to Oscar shooting Reeva and the trial that captivated the world. Did Oscar intentionally shoot her while in a jealous rage or, as he claimed, did he accidentally shoot her? The film refuses to give us a definitive answer, leaving it up to the viewer to decide. That seems to be a bit of a cop-out but then again, that’s the way it usually is with these true crime films. They never definitely validate one side or the other. It’s just like how last week’s Robert Durst movie couldn’t come right out and show Durst killing his wife even though everyone knows that’s probably what happened. Ambiguity can be good but sometimes, you just want the movie to have the courage to offer up an answer.

Anyway, as for the rest of Blade Runner Killer, it was a bit too slow and disjointed to really work. As I watched the film, I couldn’t help but feel that, unlike the Durst case, there really wasn’t enough to the Pistorius case to justify an entire, 90-minute movie. Though the script never really dug far beneath the surface, both Andreas Damm and Toni Garrn did a good job as Oscar and Reeva. Otherwise, this one was pretty forgettable.

(Hi there! So, as you may know because I’ve been talking about it on this site all year, I have got way too much stuff on my DVR. Seriously, I currently have 205 things recorded! I’ve decided that, on January 15th, I am going to erase everything on the DVR, regardless of whether I’ve watched it or not. So, that means that I’ve now have only two months to clean out the DVR! Will I make it? Keep checking this site to find out! I recorded Off The Rails off of the Lifetime Movie Network on March 26th!)

Oh, poor Nicole (Hannah Barefoot)!

When we first meet her, Nicole is recovering from amnesia. She knows that she was injured in a catastrophic train derailment. She knows that she’s married to Mark (Thomas Beaudoin), who seems like the perfect husband. She knows that her therapist is Dr. Teres (Andrea Cirie). She knows that she’s oddly obsessed with maps and that she teaches at the local college. However, she is still not totally sure what her life was like before the accident. And sometimes, she wonders if she can actually trust Mark. For instance, she suspects that, while she was in her coma, Mark added onto the deck in the back yard. Mark swears that it was her idea but why would she want to do that?

Nicole is also convinced that she has never had a Facebook account. She swears that she’s never been on Twitter. She doesn’t even know what Instagram is! “You call me a Luddite!” she says to one of her friends, “I do remember that!” But, if that’s true, why do all of her friends swear that they’ve talked to her on Facebook? And why are all sorts of sleazy men approaching her, all claiming that they met her online?

That’s not all Nicole has to worry about. There’s also the weird visions that she’s having, many of them involving being watched by a menacing-looking raven. And then there’s the French Canadian photographer (Andreas Damm). Nicole is not sure who he is but she sure did take a lot of happy pictures with him. Could it be that she wasn’t as happy in her marriage as both Mark and her therapist insist?

There were some parts of Off The Rails that I really liked. The story was, at times, genuinely intriguing and I always appreciate it whenever Lifetime films mix a little surrealism in with the melodrama. The first part of the film does a very good of creating a properly ominous atmosphere and Hannah Barefoot does a good job portraying Nicole’s confusion and paranoia. Obviously, it demanded a considerable suspension of disbelief to buy into the idea that Nicole could possibly be so ignorant of social media in 2017 but then again, that’s Lifetime for you. Social media is always the source of all evil in the world of Lifetime.

Unfortunately, there’s a twist at the end of Off The Rails that simply does not work and it actually cheapens the film a bit. I understand that it’s a Lifetime film and that, therefore, things can never end on too dark of a note but, in this case, the movie’s story demanded and deserved an ending that was just a bit more bittersweet.

Still, I’d recommend Off the Rails. Up until that final shot, it’s a nicely done Lifetime mystery. You’ll probably figure out the solution early but it’s still entertainingly melodramatic and just weird enough to be worthwhile.