Tag Archives: Max McGuire

What Lisa Marie Watched Last Night #224: Ice Road Killer (dir by Max McGuire)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last night, I watched Ice Road Killer on the Lifetime Movie Network!

Why Was I Watching It?

It had been a while since I had last watched a Lifetime movie and, with this year soon to come to a close, I figured that last night would be a good time to start catching up.

What Was It About?

While on her way to pick up her daughter from college, Helen (Sarah Allen) nearly runs over a young woman named Carly (Zoe Belkin).  Carly claims that she’s stranded.  Because the roads are icy and a heavy snow is falling, Helen agrees to give Carly a ride to wherever Carly is going.  Needless to say, Helen’s daughter, Lauren (Erica Anderson), is not amused.

Of course, what Helen doesn’t realize is that Carly and her boyfriend, Boyd (Connor McMahon), are planning on robbing her.  But what Carly and Boyd don’t realize is that they are being followed by a psycho trucker (Michael Swatton), who is looking for revenge.  

What Worked?

For a Lifetime film, Ice Road Killer had some effectively scary moments and some creepy locations.  (The motel where Helen, Lauren, and Carly initially attempted to spend the night was memorably run-down and it brought back some memories of my own childhood road trips.)  The ice, the snow, and the howling wind all added up to create an otherworldly atmosphere and Christopher Guglick’s original score was appropriately ominous.  

Michael Swatton was wonderfully creepy as the psycho trucker.

What Did Not Work?

A huge issue that I had was that Carly and Boyd’s robbery scheme never made sense to me.  Instead of just robbing Helen when she first stopped to pick up Carly, Boyd instead followed behind Helen and Carly while they drove down the icy road.  If you’re going to rob a random driver, it seems like it would make more sense to just do it and make a run for it instead of dragging it all out.

Another issue that I had was with the idea that anyone, in the year 2022, would actually pick up a hitchhiker, especially someone like Helen who had reason to not trust people in general.  I get that the weather was bad but still, it seems like a stretch that Helen would give Carly a ride, arrange for Carly to spend the night in a motel with Helen and her daughter, and then leave Carly — a total stranger — alone with the $500 that Helen could not afford to lose. 

You always have to be willing to suspend your disbelief when it comes to Lifetime films, that’s usually a part of the fun.  This film just asked you to suspend it even more than usual.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

I am a fairly compassionate person and I do believe in helping those in need but there’s no way in Hell that I would ever pick up a hitchhiker, regardless of how bad the weather conditions are.  If I see a person stranded on the side of the road, I might feel bad for them but I’m still not going to let them get in my car.  I might encourage someone driving behind me to pick them up but I’ve seen too many horror films to make that mistake myself.  So, I couldn’t relate to that part of the film.

However, I also don’t drive well in cold weather.  When Helen ran her car off the icy road and nearly ran over Carly, I could totally relate to that.

Lessons Learned

Don’t pick up hitchhikers and by nice to truck drivers!

Lifetime Film Review: The Evil Twin (dir by Max McGuire)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

If there’s anything I’ve learned from watching Lifetime films, it’s that anyone can afford a gigantic, three-story house with a basement, an attic, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a guesthouse. Seriously, I don’t know why everyone always says it’s so difficult to get that first house because there are unemployed people in Lifetime films who live in mansions.

The other thing that I’ve learned from watching Lifetime films is that you’re screwed if you’ve got a twin. Seriously, your twin is always going to be evil. Your twin is always going to pretend to be you so that she can sleep with your boyfriend and murder your coworkers. Your twin is going to use her own DNA to frame you and then, once you’re imprisoned, she’s going to sell your identity to the Russian mob and then you’ll never get it back. Twins are bad news, or at least that’s the way it goes in the Lifetime Cinematic Universe. I’ve lost track of how many psycho twin films I’ve seen on Lifetime.

The most recent psycho twin film is named, appropriately enough, Evil Twin. Emily Piggford plays Emily, who flees from an abusive relationship and returns to her small hometown. She’s staying with her friend Lenah (Cory Lee, who also played Miss Oh on Degrassi) and she’s trying to get her life back together. Unfortunately, this prove difficult because random people keep walking up to Emily and yelling at her before telling her to stay out of their lives. Emily doesn’t know any of these people and is left to wonder why so many strangers suddenly hate her.

Emily also discovers that she has a twin sister named Charlotte! Charlotte, who lives in a beautiful house and who has longer hair than Emily, at first seems to be thrilled to have found her twin. She even asks Emily to turn her head so that Charlotte can see what the back of their earlobes look like. (That may sound like a strange request but I’d probably ask the same thing if I ever met my twin. Ears are fascinating things.) However, it soon turns out that …. well, you can probably guess. I mean, the movie is called Evil Twin, after all. Soon, Charlotte is pretending to be Emily and she’s attacking people left and right. You know how these things go.

Evil Twin is a bit more moody than the average Lifetime film. The fact that Emily is escaping from abuse and still dealing with the emotional trauma of her previous relationship gives the film a few more layers than the average Lifetime film and Emily Piggford does a good job playing both Emily and her twin sister. The film actually does manage to keep you guessing as to which twin is onscreen at any particular moment and, with Charlotte being considerably more clever and ruthless than the average Lifetime villain, the film manages to generate some suspense as Charlotte kills and maims her way through the people in Emily’s life. Evil Twin may not be the first Lifetime psycho twin movie and it definitely won’t be the last but it is one of the better ones.

LifetimeFilm Review: The Sweetheart (a.k.a. Dating A Sociopath) (dir by Max McGuire)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Is this Canadian film from 2018 called The Sweetheart or Dating a Sociopath?

It depends on where you first saw it.

When it was on Netflix, it was called The Sweetheart.  However, when the film recently aired on Lifetime, the title had been changed to Dating A Sociopath.  We all know how much Lifetime loves to change titles and, in this case, I think they made the right move.  Dating A Sociopath just has a certain punch to it that The Sweetheart lacks.  The Sweetheart makes it sound like this is a film about one of those old women who always has 60 year-old candy sitting in a glass jar.  Whereas Dating A Sociopath tells you pretty much everything that you need to know about the film.

The sociopath of the title is Brian (John Cor), who is a personal trainer who apparently has a nice side gig going where he seduces wealthy women, spends all of their money, and murders them.  John Cor does a pretty good job of playing Brian, turning up the charm even while he’s doing some of the worst things imaginable.  As played by Cor, you can understand just how exactly Brian has managed to be such a successful con artist.  There’s also a great scene in which a jewelry store employee attempts to blackmail Brian and Brian responds not with the expected violence but instead by precisely explaining everything that he will do to the employee if he doesn’t keep quiet.  In this scene, Brian is both charismatic and dangerous and scary as Hell.

Brian’s latest target is Samantha (Jessalyn Gilsig), who is currently separated from her well-meaning but alcoholic husband.  Samantha thinks that Brian is the best but her oldest daughter, Jane (Hannah Vandenbygaart), is immediately suspicious of him  Of course, Jane has problems of her own to deal with.  Thanks to her father’s lack of sobriety and basic driving skills, Jane has a broken leg and is forced to spend most of the movie hopping around on either crutches or using a cane.  Making things even worse for Jane is the fact that Brian keeps messing with her medication, the better to keep Jane in constant pain and to also fool everyone into thinking that she’s become a pill-popping drug addict.

And I have to say that, as someone who has broken her ankle on multiple occasions and who knows just how Hellish the healing process can be without painkillers, nothing made me dislike Brian more than those scenes where he would sneak into Jane’s room and switch out her medication while she was sleeping.  I mean, if I didn’t already know it from the title, those scenes would be all the proof that I needed to know that Brian was a sociopath.  At the same time, those scenes also firmly put me on Jane’s side.  By the time Jane finally stood up for herself and started her own investigation into Brian’s past, I was ready to jump and cheer.

Dating A Sociopath is a pretty entertaining Lifetime film, even if it wasn’t originally made for Lifetime.  John Cor and Hannah Vandenbygaart are both well-cast in the two most important roles and if nothing else, the film will encourage anyone to think twice before dating a sociopath.  Even a charming one.

What Lisa Watched This Morning #192: Lethal Soccer Mom (dir by Max McGuire)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

This morning, I watched the latest Lifetime premiere movie, Lethal Soccer Mom!

Why Was I Watching It?

Seriously, how could anyone resist a movie with a title like Lethal Soccer Mom?

Actually, according to the imdb, this film was originally titled Sidelined so I’m going to guess that Lifetime changed the title so it could fit in with their “lethal” series of films.  Personally, I think Lifetime probably made the right choice here.  Sidelined isn’t bad but Lethal Soccer Mom just demands to be watched.

For the record, the film itself actually premiered on Friday night but since I was out, I set the DVR to record it.

What Was It About?

Kate (Tanya Clarke) and her teenage daughter, Cameron (Sarah Grey) have just moved into a new home and Cameron is starting at a new school.  Cameron can’t wait to join her school’s soccer team but she soon discovers that the team’s star player, Hailey (Hannah Vandenbygaart) views her as being a rival.  Complicating things is the fact that Hailey’s mother, Rhonda (Christina Cox), is the coach of the team and worries that Cameron might overshadow her daughter.

As messy as that sounds, it gets even messier when it turns out that Rhonda is willing to do anything make her daughter a star.  Soon, Cameron is being pushed down stairs, getting beaten up at practice, and even her grades are being tampered with!  How far is Rhonda willing to go to keep Cameron off the team?

Well, the title of the movie is Lethal Soccer Mom…

What Worked?

When your movie has a title like Lethal Soccer Mom, you’re being promised a certain amount of melodramatic excess and this film certainly delivered on that promise.  Tanya Clarke, Christina Cox, Sarah Grey, and Hannah Vandenbygaart delivered a quartet of fine performances.  Christina Cox, in particular, really seemed to be having a lot of fun as she did everything from seducing her daughter’s boyfriend to chasing her daughter’s rival around the high school with a bat.  A Lifetime film is usually only as good as its villain and Cox turned the coach into a great one!

Lethal Soccer Mom also did a good job of suggesting that, under different circumstances, both Kate and Cameron could probably be just as obsessive and dangerous as Rhonda.  In fact, the only person who didn’t seem to be way too obsessed with soccer was Hailey.

What Did Not Work?

It all worked!  This is the type of Lifetime films that I love: outrageous, melodramatic, over the top, a little bit silly, and consistently entertaining.

“Oh my God!  Just like me!” Moments

I never played soccer, both because of my asthma and also because it always seemed like everyone I knew was playing soccer and, even at a young age, I always had to be different.  Two of my sisters did play but, when we were growing up, my family moved around too much for any of us to ever get caught up in too much team drama.  Fortunately, my mom never had to become a full-fledged soccer mom.  However, because I was in love with dancing, my mom did spend several years dealing with other dance moms.  Let me tell you, crazy soccer moms have got nothing on crazy dance moms.

Lessons Learned

Soccer makes people crazy.  Of course, we all already knew that…