Last night, I watched Little Girl’s Secret on Lifetime!
Why Was I Watching It?
Oh my God, everyone’s so depressed right now!
Or, actually, I should say that almost everyone I know is depressed right now. Obviously, the entire country is not depressed about Donald Trump winning the election because 60,000,000 people voted for him and I assume that they’re all happy. But the 60,000,0000 who voted against him are all pretty depressed right now. And, even worse, a lot of them are blaming my generation because not many of us voted and quite a few of us decided to vote third party.
My twitter timeline is seriously dark right now.
So, I figured that maybe I could cheer some people up by doing one of my famous Lifetime movie live tweets! Looking to help heal a divided nation, I watched Little Girl’s Secret on Lifetime and I tweeted every single thought that popped into my head. I don’t know if I saved the world but I certainly did increase my Klout score.
What Was It About?
That’s a good question! This film left me thoroughly confused, though that may be because I’m currently spending the weekend at my uncle’s and, as I tried to watch and tweet, I was also having to deal with 100 hyperactive cousins.
As far as I could tell, here’s what was happening in the movie: Jean (Maria Bello) is an artist. Dave (Callum Keith Rennie) is a writer. Molly (Sophie Nelisse) is Jean’s teenage daughter. Heather (Isabelle Nelisse) is Dave’s daughter. Michael (William Dickinson) is someone’s son. I guess he’s Molly’s brother but it wasn’t always easy to keep track of how everyone was related. He could have been Dave’s son and Heather’s brother. It really doesn’t matter.
Anyway, in 1982, this family leaves Baltimore and moves into a new home — a former church that’s been turned into a house! There’s a cemetery out back. There are ruins nearby. There’s a ghostly apparition that appears occasionally. Heather, who doesn’t feel like she belongs in this reconstructed family, is soon spending all of her time talking to the apparition.
Meanwhile, Molly is having nightmares and she keeps seeing birds forming ominous shapes in the sky. (It’s kinda like in Take Shelter.) She also starts to hear noises in the dark and see ominous shadows in unlit rooms. Why doesn’t anyone ever turn on the lights?
What Worked?
It had its share of creepy moments. Molly’s dreams were always well-executed.
What Did Not Work?
This movie was so damn dark! I don’t mean thematically. I mean that it was often hard to see what was going on in the movie because it never seemed to occur to anyone to turn on a light! I get the point, of course. This was a horror movie and everyone’s scared of the dark. But, after a little while, the constant darkness went from being atmospheric to just being silly.
Maria Bello, a terrific actress, was pretty much wasted in a minor role.
I was going to complain about the film’s pacing but I think that has more to do with the fact that it premiered on Lifetime than anything else. It’s difficult to maintain suspense when you’re having to stop every few minutes for a commercial break.
And finally, the plot itself was overly complicated and not particularly easy to follow.
“Oh my God! Just like me!” Moments
I related to Molly in quite a few scenes. I was a rebellious 14 year-old too.
Lessons Learned
TURN ON THE DAMN LIGHTS!
Through the Shattered Lens 