Jake Stormeon | Through the Shattered Lens

Tonight, I watched the 2nd Lifetime film of 2020, Her Deadly Reflections (a.k.a. Shattered Memories)!

Why Was I Watching It?

Well, the main reason I was watching it was because it was on the Lifetime Movie Network and, by this point, everyone should know that there’s no way I can resist a new Lifetime film.

I also really liked the title. According to imdb, this film is also known as Shattered Memories but I prefer Her Deadly Reflections. I mean, “Deadly” is one of those word that, when it appears in a title, you simply can’t resist. Especially when that title happens to belong to a Lifetime film!

What Was It About?

It’s a Lifetime amnesia film!

Kelly Moore (Helena Mattsson) is an artist who has just woken up in the hospital. Apparently, she’s been in a terrible car accident. In fact, she’s lucky to have survived! Unfortunately, she’s also woken up with partial amnesia. She remembers her childhood. She remembers growing up. She remembers waking up in the hospital. But almost everything in-between is a blank. She no longer knows her husband, Dan (Corey Sevier). She barely knows her best friend, Allison (Melanie Stone) or Allison’s husband, Logan (Jake Stormeon).

What she does know is that she keeps having vague flashes of memory that suggest that there’s more to her injuries than just being in an accident. She sees herself falling out of a window and running from an unseen assailant. Who tried to kill her and why? That’s what Kelly has to try to figure out, while also putting together the clues to discover just what her life was like before the accident.

What Worked?

I always enjoy a good Lifetime amnesia film and Her Deadly Reflections contained all of the elements that you could hope for this unique cinematic genre, everything from hazy flashbacks to sudden realizations that neither Kelly’s marriage nor her friendships were quite as strong as she’s originally led to believe when she first wakes up. It’s an interesting dynamic. Because Kelly can’t remember anything that happened before her accident, everyone tries to pretend as if things were perfect before Kelly lost her memory. I imagine that’s what people would do in real life, as well.

Helena Mattsson did a good job in the lead role, capturing Kelly’s confusion as she struggled to figure out who she used to be. Melanie Stone was also well-cast as Kelly’s best friend.

What Did Not Work?

The film needed a few more suspects to really keep us guessing as to who attacked Kelly.. Once we eliminated all of the obvious the suspects, there was only one person left so the revelation of that person’s identity was not quite as shocking as it could have been.

“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments

I’m happy to say that I’ve never had amnesia, though I did once total my car. (In fact, it flipped over and the fact that I wasn’t killed or even seriously injured was something of a miracle.) I could relate to Kelly and Allison’s friendship. I’ve had friends like Allison. I think we all have.

Lessons Learned

Memories are important so don’t ever let go of them.

Have you ever noticed how movies about teenagers always treat the rules of the “Never Have I Ever” game like they’re some sort of legally binding contract?

Seriously, I’ve seen this happen in so many movies. Someone has a deep, dark secret that they don’t want to reveal. They know that if they reveal the secret, a lot of bad stuff will happen as a result. Feelings will be hurt. Friendships will be crushed. Lives will be lost.

But then the minute somebody says, “Never have I ever fucked my best friend’s boyfriend,” they always drink up. Half the time, they’re the only person to take a drink. And, during all of the drama that unfolds, it never occurs to anyone to say, “Why didn’t you just not take the drink!? It’s just a game, after all!”

Something like this happens in the 2016 film, Nocturne. Nocturne takes place at perhaps the saddest high school graduation party of all time. All of the cool kids have gone to another party, which means that only seven people show up at this party. From that humble beginning, things quickly go downhill as the graduates hang out in the hot tub, play the Never Have I Ever game, and listen to Gabe (Jake Stormeon) ramble about religion and philosophy and stuff. Gabe also demonstrates some card tricks so yeah …. that’s definitely the way to end your high school career.

Anyway, bad parties always seem to lead to people trying to contact the dead and that’s what happens here. Gabe sets up a makeshift séance and the graduates ask the dead a lot of questions that they probably shouldn’t have asked. (Seriously, I’ve been to a few bad parties in my lifetime and you an always tell that the party is officially dead once people actually try to talk to the …. well, dead.)

Needless to say, this leads to someone getting possessed and just about everyone else dying. The other party was probably a lot more fun.

So, on the plus side, Nocturne is fairly well-acted and some of the death scenes were clever. The film’s chronology is a bit jumbled, which is one of those storytelling tricks that can be really annoying but which is justified here by the fact that demon exists beyond our conventional understanding of time and space.

On the negative side, a cat dies about halfway through the film and, as I discussed years ago in my review of Drag Me To Hell, it’s hard for me to endorse any film in which a cat is killed. I mean, honestly, I would think most supernatural beings would appreciate the fact that a cat can sleep through just about anything. Whereas a dog would be barking and throwing a fit over all the murders being committed, a cat would probably just relax in a corner and play with a toy mouse or something. In this film, there was really no reason to kill the cat and it felt a bit gratuitous. It was hard not to tell that the only reason the cat was put in the film was so it could be killed. My point is, if you want to me to like your movie, don’t kill the cat.

Anyway, Nocturne is a rather uneven film. If you can see past the dead cat, you might find this one interesting. It has its creepy moments, even if it’s hard not to feel that the overall movie doesn’t really work.