Tag Archives: Lifetime

October On Lifetime: Center Stage For Murder (dir by Jake Helgren)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Watching Lifetime’s Center Stage for Murder brought back a lot of memories for me.

A lot of that is because it took place in the world of ballet. Dancing in general and ballet in particular was pretty much my life up until I turned sixteen. Sixteen was when I started to realize that, thanks to a combination of big boobs and lack of coordination, I was never going to be known as the world’s greatest ballerina and instead started to turn my attention to writing. Still, I stuck with dancing until I fell down a flight of stairs at the age of 17 and broke my ankle in two places. Injuries were nothing new to me. Even when I was really into ballet, I was still basically a klutz. (Someone once told me that my main strength as a dancer was that I was cute enough to distract everyone from my mistakes and, in retrospect, I have to agree.) When this movie opened with a shot of dancers in their leotards trying to focus while a snooty teacher with an indecipherable accent savagely critiqued them, it was a true “Oh my God! Just like me!” moment.

The other “Oh my God! Just like me!” moment came when Chloe Pearson (Krystal Ellsworth) fell down a flight of stairs and ended up confined to her home due to injury. I cannot begin to count the number of times that happened to me. In fact, it happened so many times that my mom started to tell my instructors not to let me go outside alone if it was raining, snowing, or in any way icy because she knew there was no way I wouldn’t end up slipping and spraining something. (At least that’s the way I remember it!) At the time, I always laughed off the pain. “Oh my God, why am I so clumsy!?” Of course, whenever I found myself limping because the weather had suddenly changed, I find it to be a little less amusing.

In Center Stage for Murder, Stephen Tracy plays a guy who claims to be a physical therapist. He shows up at Chloe’s apartment and introduces himself as Avery Mitchell. He’s been assigned to help Chloe get back on her feet. At first, Chloe is thankful for Avery’s help. He’s not only a physical therapist but he’s also a good listener, and goodness knows, Chloe has a lot of problems that she needs to discuss. However, one of Chloe’s friends points out that Avery doesn’t appear to know some basic things about physical therapy. And Avery himself quickly starts to become rather possessive of Chloe. Soon, Avery is at the apartment all the time and Chloe finds herself a prisoner in her own rented home. Is Avery an obsessed psycho or is there an even bigger conspiracy at work?

Anyone who has ever seen a Lifetime film already knows the answer to that question, just like we knew as soon as Avery showed up that he wasn’t the real Avery Mitchell. Indeed, for all of her talent as a dancer, Chloe apparently doesn’t have much common sense because it’s pretty obvious from the start that something is off about Avery. That’s not a complaint, though. Part of the appeal of Lifetime movies is that they’re so predictable. In an uncertain world, they’re comfort food. They’re a nice brunch or late-night snack, served with appetizers of sex, blood, and melodrama. Center Stage for Murder was entertaining both because of the “Oh my God! Just like me!” moments and also because it embraced the melodrama without shame or hesitation. It was over-the-top from the word “go!” and that’s exactly the way Lifetime fans like it!

Center Stage for Murder is not the best Lifetime film of 2026. Of the 2026 Lifetime films that I’ve watched, that honor still belongs to The Couple Across the Street. That said, it’s definitely a film that reminded me of why I fell in love with Lifetime to begin with.

October True Crime: Menendez: Blood Brothers (dir by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hollywood is stunned when entertainment executive Jose Menendez (Benito Martinez) and his wife Kitty (Courtney Love) are brutally gunned down in their Beverly Hills home. Hollywood is shocked a second time when Jose and Kitty’s two sons, Erik (Myko Oliver) and Lyle (Nico Tortorella), are arrested and charged with the crime. A third shock comes when Erik and Lyle admit to killing their parents but claim that it was done in self-defense. They tell a harrowing story of being physically and sexually abused by their father, and they portray their mother as being his enabler. High-powered defense attorney Leslie Abramson (Meredith Scott Lynn) is hired to defend Erik in his trial. A final shock comes when it’s discovered that 20-something Lyle is bald and has been wearing a wig since he was a teenager.

Menendez: Blood Brothers aired on Lifetime in 2017, several years before the better-known Menendez brothers miniseries aired on Netflix. However, both Blood Brothers and Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story suffer from the same problem. On the one hand, the Menendez brothers are obviously guilty and, while everyone seems to agree that Jose could be a harsh taskmaster when it comes to his sons, not everyone agrees that he was abusive. (And indeed, it’s interesting to note that, while both parents were shot at close range, Kitty was the one that the brothers really seemed to be obsessed with punishing.) On the other hand, no one wants to admit that someone could lie about being abused and, as a result, many people feel like they have almost an obligation to believe the claims of the Menendez brothers. Monsters handled this issue by refusing to take a definite side. The first half of the series was devoted to the brothers telling their story while the second half dealt with the lives of Jose and Kitty. Blood Brothers deals with this issue by focusing on Erik as the more sympathetic of the two brothers and essentially suggesting that anything bad that happened was totally the fault of Lyle. Erik just wants to be a good son, a good defendant, and ultimately a good prisoner. But dangit, arrogant old Lyle with his bald head and his smug smirk just keeps getting in the way!

That said, Blood Brothers is definitely on the side of Lyle and Erik. Jose is portrayed as a tyrant and the brothers are portrayed as being two somewhat spoiled rich kids who were ultimately pushed to murder by the abuse that they suffered. The ghost of Kitty shows up throughout the film and, for the most part, she seems to be sympathetic to her sons. At the very least, she doesn’t give them a hard time about killing her. (If I were her, I would never stop making them feel guilty about it.) Love gives a fairly good performance in the role and keeps you guessing as to whether or not she’s really a ghost or just a figment of the brothers’ imagination. It’s a well-made film, even if its biases are pretty clear from the start. I’d recommend it over Monsters if only because Blood Brothers gets the job done in 90 minutes and there’s something to be said for not wasting time.

Lifetime In October: The Couple Across The Street (dir by Anjali Nayar)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The Lawsons—Amy (Jenny Raven), Brett (Nate Lawson), and their teenage daughter Lily (Presley Allard)—have just moved into a new home in the country. It’s a nice house and, for Amy, it’s a chance to get away from the city and her former life as a high-priced lawyer. Amy spends a lot of time repeating to herself that she’s strong and she can survive. Of course, all the self-help mantras in the world don’t change the fact that Brett is kind of goofy and Lily is at that age where she really doesn’t want to spend too much time hanging out with her mother.

Living across the street are Rachel (Ellen David) and Tom Sullivan (William MacDonald). Rachel and Tom are an older couple. Tom used to work in military intelligence, which leads to a bit of awkwardness when he admits that he ran a background check on Amy and Brett before they even moved into their new house. Rachel and Tom are also doomsday preppers, complete with an underground bunker and bear traps on their property. Amy takes an almost instant dislike to Tom and Rachel, but Brett seems to enjoy their company. “They’re fun,” Brett puts it.

And they are fun… until a police helicopter flies overhead and Rachel and Tom learn that there’s a killer on the loose. They take Lily, Brett, and Amy into their underground bunker. Rachel and Tom claim that they’re just trying to keep them safe, but Amy has her doubts. Why are Tom and Rachel always whispering to each other? Why do they seem so interested in Amy’s marriage to Brett and whether or not the two of them ever fight? When Amy hears Brett talking to someone and saying that he doesn’t have enough information, what is he talking about? Brett keeps saying that Amy is being paranoid, but Amy comes to suspect that there’s something Tom and Rachel aren’t telling her…

This turned out to be one of the best Lifetime films that I’ve recently seen. When the film started, I didn’t think I was going to like it. It seemed like Rachel and Tom were a heavy-handed representation of every delusion that blue staters have about red staters. Amy seemed so suspicious and so instantly judgmental that I wondered if the film’s director realized that she was kind of unlikable. It seemed as if she was going to spend the whole film complaining about the fact that people enjoyed hanging out with Brett more than they did with her.

Luckily, the film turned out to be a lot smarter and far more self-aware than I gave it credit for. There’s a twist that occurs during the final fourth of the film that totally changes the entire film and forces you to reexamine everything that you originally assumed about the characters. This film is actually a pretty clever look at how we allow our own prejudices to affect our thinking without even realizing it. Both the film’s characters and the audience are forced to reconsider how they originally reacted to each other.

This was a good Lifetime film. The bunker was a fascinating location and all five members of the main cast gave excellent performances. There were a few solid jump scares as well, making this a good pick if you’re looking to watch a Lifetime film for October

Lifetime In October: Killer Prom (dir by Alexandre Carriere)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 2020’s Killer Prom, Yvonne Zima plays Sienna. Poor Sienna is desperately struggling with her life. She has a cheap apartment that she still can’t really afford. Her mother wants nothing to do with her. She hasn’t had much of a romantic life since missing her high school prom. She’s very jealous of her distant cousin, Hannah (Megan Vincent). Hannah is married to Dr. Tony Wilson (Mark Lutz), a man on whom Sienna has always had a crush. So, Sienna drowns Hannah at the family reunion and then moves to Texas so she can be close to Tony and his family.

Sienna not only wants to marry Tony. She also wants to help Tony’s teenage daughter, Maya (Erica Anderson), have a great prom night! In fact, Sienna has it all perfectly planned out. While Maya is off at prom, Tony will be so moved by his love for Sienna that he’ll ask her to marry him. The only problem is that Maya instantly notices that something is off about Sienna and she really doesn’t want her anywhere near her prom or her date, Jake (Kyle Meagher). Meanwhile, Tony is too busy mourning his wife to fall in love with anyone. And even if Tony was going to fall in love with anyone, it would probably be his assistant, Lauren (Brianna Barnes).

Oh, Sienna hates Lauren. When Lauren shows up at a barbecue, Sienna has to duck into the bathroom so she can ask her reflection, “Who wears a red dress to a barbecue!?” Really, Sienna? Who wears a red dress to a barbecue? I WEAR A RED DRESS TO A BARBECUE! You have a problem with me!? That said, Lauren’s dress is a little bit too expensive for a barbecue. Barbecues can get messy as anyone who has seen that picture of James Talarico sinking his teeth into those ribs can tell you.

Anyway, it’s a Lifetime film so Sienna loses it. She goes from wanting to marry Tony and become Maya’s stepmother to wanting to kill them both and does it pretty quickly. Of course, it’s up to Maya to save the family, even if that means missing her own prom. Don’t count on Tony to do anything. Tony is bizarrely clueless, even though it’s pretty much obvious from the start that Sienna has some issues. Men in Lifetime films never stop to think that the attractive woman who was the last person to see their wife before her mysterious death could possibly be a troublemaker.

I really enjoyed Killer Prom, mostly because I went to prom every year that I was in high school and I had a blast each time. Movies like this pretty much live and die based on how effective the actress playing the psycho is and Yvonne Zima gives a wonderfully unhinged performance as Sienna. She’s just so incredibly excited about the prom! It’s hard not to feel bad for her when it becomes clear that she’s going to end up missing another one.

October On Lifetime: A Deadly Grudge (dir by Nigel Thomas)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Yes, the movie has multiple titles.

In 2021’s A Deadly Grudge, Lindsey (Annika Foster) owns a restaurant with her fiancé Gavin (Jonathan Stoddard). (It’s a Lifetime film and, in the world of Lifetime, there’s nothing easier than owning your own restaurant or opening your own art gallery.) Her father, Jim (Patrick M.J. Finerty), is internet-famous for his cooking videos. And her mother… well, she’s dead. She dies while she’s out jogging and a car runs her over. What’s odd is that she doesn’t bother to get out of the way of the car despite having several minutes in which to do so. It’s always strange to me how people in Lifetime films always seem to end up jogging in the middle of the road. I start nearly every morning with a jog and I usually manage to stay on the sidewalk. It’s just safer that way.

At her mother’s funeral, Lindsey is shocked to see Jim hugging a younger woman. Lindsey immediately assumes that Jim is having an affair, because why else would you hug someone at a funeral? Jim explains that the younger woman is actually Sarah (Aubrey Reynolds). Sarah is not his mistress. Sarah is his daughter. It turns out that Lindsey never learned that she had a half-sister. Lindsey also didn’t know that her parents never actually got married. Instead, Jim was legally married to Sarah’s mother because Sarah’s family would have disowned her if she had a child out of wedlock. To be honest, not a single part of Jim’s story makes any sense, but somehow Lindsey accepts it.

To continue being honest, it’s pretty obvious that Sarah was the one who ran over Lindsey’s mother. If you’ve ever seen a Lifetime film, you know that Sarah’s guilty, because long-lost siblings are always guilty. In typical Lifetime fashion, Lindsey is immediately suspicious of Sarah, but everyone else loves her. Jim is especially happy when he discovers that Sarah knows how to bake. Whoops — Sarah put some cinnamon in one of her recipes! Lindsey is deathly allergic to cinnamon! It never ceases to amaze me how every Lifetime film seems to feature at least one person with a deadly food allergy. I always get the feeling that Lifetime studios must be full of discarded EpiPens.

The title refers to Sarah, who definitely does have a grudge against Lindsey. However, it could also refer to Lindsey, who takes an immediate dislike to her half-sister and who spends the entire movie getting mad about the fact that not everyone else seems to hate her as much as she does. More like Two Sisters’ Grudges, to be honest. (The film was also released as A Sister’s Grudge, which is closer, but still only counts one of them.) It actually gets kind of amusing after a little while. Every time someone says anything nice about Sarah, Lindsey scowls and dramatically rolls her eyes. Occasionally, she gasps in disbelief. She’s so vocal about her dislike of Sarah that you actually end up feeling a little bit sorry for Sarah. I mean, Sarah is the one who grew up with an unstable mom and the knowledge that her father had another family that he loved more than her.

Anyway, this is pretty much a standard Lifetime melodrama. Unfortunately, no one in the film is particularly sympathetic. Lindsey comes across like someone who would talk about you behind your back. Sarah comes across like she would try to poison you with cinnamon. I’ll let you decide which is worse.

Lifetime For October: Deadly Dorm (dir by Brent Ryan Green)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This is one of those Lifetime films that has several different titles. The poster says Deadly Dormitory. Letterboxd claims that the title is Deadly Dorm. If you want to watch this film on Prime, you’ll have to look up College Professor Obsession. Me, I’m going to go with Deadly Dorm because that’s the easiest to say and the quickest title to type.

First aired in 2021, Deadly Dorm tells the story of Jenny Willis (Grace Patterson), a high school track star who is recovering from a knee injury. She’s finally well enough to accept a partial scholarship to an exclusive college. She tells her parents that she’s willing to go to a state school, but her parents insist that they will be able to pay for college. The whole opening of the movie reminded me of that old commercial they would show where recent high school graduates would record themselves saying, “I am going to college,” as if that was some sort of rare thing. I remember one guy who said, “It’s oh-fish-ee-al,” and I was just like, “Maybe don’t say it like that once you’re on campus.”

Anyway, Jenny enrolls in the college and moves into the dorm. Everyone she meets acts shocked when they hear which dorm room she’ll be moving into. It turns out that the room was previously occupied by a girl who died under mysterious circumstances. She was on the roof of the dorm, and she either fell, was pushed, or jumped. Jenny freaks out when she realizes that she’s going to be sleeping in the dead girl’s bed. Seriously, Jenny, just buy some new sheets and calm down.

Jenny is scandalized when her psychology professor (Randy Wayne) tells her that, if she wants to get better grades, she should try dressing a little better and showing off her legs and cleavage when she comes to class. Jenny is upset, and she has every right to be, even though I do agree that Jenny’s wardrobe is a bit on the frumpy side. Jenny’s roommate and new best friend, Beth (Johanna Liauw), says that the professor is a jerk but he also has tenure, so maybe it would be a good idea for Jenny to just give him what he wants.

Jenny starts to investigate on her own, and she soon comes to believe that the dead girl was also harassed by the professor. What if the professor killed the girl who used to live in Jenny’s dorm room? What if the professor has killed several people on campus? Does tenure cover that? It probably does at a private institution like this one. Jenny really should have gone to a state school.

On the one hand, I appreciated that this film had a lot of twists and turns in the plot. It embraced the melodrama, and I support that. I have to admit, though, that Jenny and her overprotective mother (Jocelyn Saenz) both kind of got on my nerves. Jenny was such a generic character that I actually felt sorry for her roommates. One character ends up seriously injured as a result of helping out Jenny, and it was hard not to notice that Jenny didn’t really seem to feel much guilt about that. When it came to college friendships, my firm rule was that I didn’t want to be dragged into anyone else’s drama, and Jenny doesn’t seem like she would have respected that.

The best scene in the film was when Jenny tried to stand up to her professor in the middle of class and the professor responded by announcing that she had borderline personality disorder and all of the other students just nodded in agreement. That felt like the most realistic scene in the film, as it captured how people will believe anything as long as it’s said by someone in authority.

October On Lifetime: Taste Of His Own Poison (dir by Soran Mardookhi)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 2025 Lifetime film Taste of His Own Poison opens with nerdy high school student Dylan (Nolen Dubuc) being attacked in the school bathroom by his nemesis, Sawyer (Dylan Kingwell). Sawyer, who comes from a broken home and looks up to his delinquent older brother, has a bizarre obsession with harassing Dylan. For some reason, he likes to eat half of Dylan’s lunch before tossing it on the floor and forcing Dylan to eat what’s left. This time, Dylan is saved by his best friend, Meredith (Juliette Hawk). Meredith tells Sawyer to leave Dylan alone, and Sawyer backs off. Later, in their chemistry class, Dylan attacks Sawyer.

Dylan’s mother, Courtenay (Rhonda Dent), is stunned to hear that Dylan has been getting into fights at school. Like all Lifetime mothers, Courtenay owns her own restaurant and has tried to raise her son to know better than to try to solve his problems with his fists. Her husband, Ben (Jonathan Purvis), is impressed that Dylan stood up for himself. As Ben explains it, he would do anything to protect his son. Courtenay doesn’t believe in rewarding violent behavior, even if father and son both claim that it was justified. Perhaps that explains why she and Ben are in the process of separating.

The next day, Sawyer once again grabs Dylan’s sandwich and eats it. Sawyer then has a seizure and promptly dies in the middle of the cafeteria. When it becomes apparent that someone poisoned Dylan’s sandwich, Courtenay finds herself considering what she would have previously thought to be impossible. Did Dylan murder Sawyer? Or was it Ben, who has already said that he would literally kill to protect his son? Both Dylan and Ben deny having anything to do with murdering Sawyer, but Sawyer’s violent older brother disagrees and wants revenge…

I really enjoyed Taste of His Own Poison, which felt like a throwback to the days when Lifetime was all about embracing the melodrama and seeing how many implausible twists could be pushed into one 90-minute story. This Lifetime film actually featured convincing high school students, as opposed to the 20-something actors who usually roam the halls. (I always notice that Lifetime high schools only seem to have about 20 students enrolled. I always have to laugh when I see the sparsely populated hallways of a Lifetime high school.) I have to admit that Taste of His Own Poison had a few plot developments that took me by surprise. A lot of that was because they often didn’t seem to make much sense, but with a film like this, it’s a bit pointless to get caught up in whether or not the story itself is realistic or if everyone is acting in a logical way. There are so many false leads and red herrings that I lost count. This is one of those films where you just follow the story to wherever it leads you. It’s the type of film that is designed to make you shake your head and say, “Oh my God,” every few minutes or so. It’s a fun movie. Just go with it.

October True Crime: Yoga Teacher Killer (dir by Katie Boland)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I was growing up, my family moved around a lot. When it came to school, it wasn’t unusual for me to finish the fall semester in one state and then start the spring semester at a totally different school in another state. By the time I was 12, I had attended schools in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Louisiana. Whenever I mention that to people, they always express some sympathy that I didn’t have more stability in my life when I was younger. While I appreciate the thought, it didn’t really bother me that much at the time. It all seemed perfectly normal.

There was one thing that always remained consistent. No matter what state I was in or what school I was attending, there was always at least one person in my class who (1) had a food allergy and (2) would freak out about it at the most inopportune times. “Does this have peanuts in it?” they would ask while looking down at the pepperoni pizza that had been ordered as a reward for the class. “I’ll die if there are peanuts in it.” And, of course, there were never any peanuts in it. But just hearing that someone could die if they ate a peanut, a banana, or a mango had a way of really ruining the mood. Often, it felt as if I was expected to feel guilty because I could actually eat food that they couldn’t.

The 2024 Lifetime film Yoga Teacher Killer: The Kaitlin Armstrong Story features a scene in which Kaitlin (Caity Lotz) is attending a yoga class. She tells everyone that she’s currently the business manager for the best “gravel rider” in the country, Colin Strickland (Kyle Schmid). No one in the class has heard of Colin, and it also appears that they don’t know that gravel riding is a type of competitive bicycle racing. Kaitlin reacts to this news by suddenly freaking out about finding a mango in a fruit cup. She claims to be allergic to them and then starts to breathe extremely rapidly while clutching at her throat. Someone asks if she has an EpiPen. Kaitlin shakes her head and then gasps that she needs some Benadryl. The interesting thing about this scene is that Kaitlin is obviously faking, and everyone in the class knows that she’s faking, but they’re also scared to point that out. So everyone has to sit there politely while Kaitlin pretends to be having a life-threatening allergic reaction.

As the scene shows, Kaitlin has an obsessive need to be the center of attention and, when she’s not, she’ll create drama to make sure that she is. When Colin briefly breaks up with her, Kaitlin makes up a story about being chased by an unknown man to win him back. Unfortunately, when Kaitlin learns that Colin briefly dates Moriah Wilson (Larissa Dias) during the time they were separated, Kaitlin loses it. Moriah is younger and more successful than Kaitlin, and Kaitlin’s obsession with her leads first to threatening phone calls before moving on to murder.

Yoga Teacher Killer is based on a real-life 2022 murder that occurred down here in Texas. The film plays up the fact that Kaitlin Armstrong was a yoga instructor even though yoga really didn’t have much to do with the actual crime. It’s pretty much a standard Lifetime true crime film, one that is distinguished by Caity Lotz’s memorably unhinged performance as Kaitlin Armstrong. The film ends with a title card informing us that Kaitlin now teaches yoga in prison. One can only assume that she’s being accommodated with a mango-free diet.

Lifetime For October: Surviving The Sleepover (dir by Patricia Fontain)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

When I was 11 years old, I spent about a month and a half living in a motel with my mom and my sisters. We were between homes, and since my mom didn’t really have the money to pay for our rooms, she and my two oldest sisters would work as maids during the day while my sister Erin and I stayed in our own room and watched stuff on the television that we probably shouldn’t have been watching. (“What are you watching!?” Mom would say as either Erin or I grabbed the remote and tried to get the TV off of HBO as quickly as possible.)

In retrospect, I know that all probably sounds very dramatic and traumatic, but I have to admit that, at the time, it just felt like an adventure. I was jealous of my mom and my sisters getting to wear uniforms every day and basically go anywhere they wanted in the motel. I would ask my mom and sisters about what they found in the rooms they had to clean, and I would beg for a chance to go with them because I figured it had to be fun to see how other people lived. They always refused. Years later, my sister Megan would tell me that they usually just found discarded underwear, used condoms, and half-eaten fast food.

Sometimes I would sit in the front lobby, bothering whoever was working behind the desk and trying to overhear conversations. I loved watching the various people who checked in and out of the motel, and I would imagine amazing identities and life stories for them. At night, I would listen for sounds coming from other rooms. One time, the police were called because the people below us were fighting, and I remember watching the reflection of the red lights flashing across the walls of my room.

That said, I think my main memory of living at that motel was that there was a creek right next to the hotel (though I always envision it as a raging river whenever I think back to those days), and on the other side of that creek there was a drive-in movie theater. Every night, I would go out on the balcony and look into the distance, at the silent images flickering across the giant screens. The fact that I couldn’t actually hear what Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were saying only made the experience more enjoyable. I could make up my own stories to go along with the images. Watching those movies became a ritual for me. I had to watch every night, at the same time, and if anyone tried to keep me from doing so, I would throw a fit. Though I didn’t fully realize it at the time, for me that drive-in came to represent stability.

I found myself thinking back to those days as I watched Surviving the Sleepover, a Lifetime film from 2024. Hannah (Sloan Mannino) is a teenage girl who has been living in a motel with her mother (Dawn Marie) ever since they moved to a new town. Hannah, whose father was killed in a fire, does not have any sisters or a drive-in to keep her company. Instead, she uploads videos and spends her time missing all of her friends. However, when popular girl Melissa (Jenna Hogan) invites Hannah to a sleepover, it seems like things might be looking up.

Of course, they’re not.

Melissa is mean as well as popular. Melissa is also obsessed with her stepbrother (Joshua Bertell), and when it becomes apparent that he likes Hannah, Melissa goes off the deep end. Soon Melissa is threatening her guests with a knife, tying people up in the attic, and basically being a very bad host.

This is an enjoyably berserk little Lifetime film, one that understands the importance of embracing the melodrama. Jenna Hogan gives an entertaining performance as the unhinged Melissa. From the moment she complained that Hannah was still “salty” just because Melissa had attempted to drown her earlier, I knew this film was going to be a Lifetime classic.

And yet, as I watched the film, my main thought was that this all could have been avoided if the nation’s drive-ins hadn’t closed. When you don’t have a drive-in theater to visit, you end up threatening people at sleepovers. That’s just the truth of the matter.

There aren’t many drive-ins left.

Protect them at all costs.

October True Crime: She Made Them Do It (dir by Grant Harvey)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

At the start of 2012’s She Made Them Do It, Sarah Jo Pender (Jenna Dewan) is a student at Purdue University who has a good-for-nothing boyfriend named Rick (Greyston Holt) and two roommates who think nothing using her tuition money to buy drugs.  At first, Sarah seems to be frustrated with the losers around her but, after smoking some weed and doing some coke, she’s soon dancing and making out with another woman while Rick plays a video game.  (Who among us hasn’t?)

Sarah leaves to get some cigarettes and, when she comes back, she discovers that her roommates have been executed by a shotgun.  A shaken Rick explains that an argument over money led to him retrieving the shotgun (one that Sarah bought for him because Rick’s criminal record made it illegal for him to buy a gun) and killing everyone else in the house.  At least, that’s what Sarah claims Rick told her.  When the police eventually arrest Rick and Sarah, Rick claims that Sarah was the mastermind behind the killings.  The prosecution describes Sarah as being a “female Charles Manson” and she’s sentenced to 110 years in prison.

Yikes!  That’s a long time!  Luckily, the prison is a pretty nice place.  Sure, some of the inmates are a little rough and everyone is initially jealous of Sarah’s combination of brains and beauty.  But the prison also hosts courtyard dance parties and eventually, Sarah proves herself as a jailhouse lawyer.  Much like Hester Prynne, Sarah show herself to be able and hard-working.  That said, prison is still prison and soon, Sarah is plotting her escape.  Luckily, there’s a smitten prison guard (Nels Lennarson) who is willing to help her out.

The title She Made Them Do It has, of course, a double meaning.  During her trial, the prosecution claims that Sarah Jo Pender made Rick murder her roommates.  Rick even produces a letter that he claims Sarah wrote to him in which she confessed to being responsible.  Even though the letter is itself dismissed as being a forgery, the courts still rule that there is more than enough evidence to argue that Sarah was involved with the murders.  However, the title also refers to the fact that everyone in prison seems to be determined to help Sarah.  Nearly everyone who she meets after she escapes tries to provide Sarah with some sort of aid.  In the end, everyone claims that she made them do it.  A few regret helping her but the majority do not.

Because the controversy over Sarah Jo Pender’s conviction is still ongoing, the film tries to play it both ways as far as the question of her guilt is concerned.  We see her version of the murder.  We see Rick’s version of the murder.  In prison, we see her helping the other prisoners.  Outside of prison, we watch as she clearly manipulates everyone that she meets.  There’s nothing wrong with a little ambiguity but this film takes it so far that Sarah often seems to be a totally different character from scene to scene.  Jenna Dewan tries her best and the film’s early scenes definitely capture the sordid atmosphere of trailer park drama but the film’s refusal to take a definite stand on Sarah’s guilt or innocence ultimately makes the story feel shallow.  It’s one thing for the prisoners and the guards to feel as if they don’t know what’s going on in Sarah Jo Pender’s head.  It’s another thing for the audience to feel that way.

As for the real Sarah Jo Pender, she is still in prison and she still claims to be innocent.  She had a lot of supporters.  I wouldn’t consider myself to be one of them.  I doubt she ‘s a female Charles Manson but I also have a hard time buying her claim that every piece of evidence against her was just a coincidence or a case of bad luck.  Unfortunately, some activists are so eager to turn every conviction into a miscarriage of justice that they ignore anything that doesn’t support their preferred narrative.  (Call it the Mumia Abu-Jamal effect.)  Sarah Jo Pender’s earliest possible relate date is 2054, when she will be 75 years old.