Richard Switzer | Through the Shattered Lens

After her husband is killed in a car accident, Sarah (Teri Polo) retreats to their gigantic suburban home. She spends her time painting pictures and resisting the efforts of her daughter (Jonetta Kaiser) and her best friend (Jamie-Lynne Sigler) to get her to move on with her life. To me, it seemed pretty obvious that Sarah was deeply depressed and everyone should really have just backed off and let her recover at her own pace. However, in the film, six months have passed since her husband’s death and, in the world of Lifetime, that means that it’s time to get back on the dating scene. Sarah’s daughter assures her that “Dad” would have wanted her to move on.

(Yes, I’m sure that Dad is sitting in the afterlife, thrilled at the idea of his widow finding a new lover less than a year after his death.)

Sarah accompanies her daughter to a speed-dating event. She goes on 20 dates in two hours. 19 of those dates are duds. But the twentieth — oh my God. Jack (Dylan Walsh) is handsome and successful and, as a widower, he understands what Sarah is going through. Even more importantly, Jack has just moved in across the street from Sarah! What a romantic coincidence! Soon, Sarah is falling for Jack and Jack appears to be falling for Sarah.

But then the neighbor turns up dead.

For reasons that aren’t really clear, Sarah doesn’t seem to have really liked Sylvia (Deborah Rennard) that much. Sylvia was nosy, the type of neighbor who stood out on her balcony and kept an eye on what everyone else was doing. Sarah and her daughter referred to Sylvia as being “the neighborhood watch” and they would go out of their way to avoid talking to Sylvia. I think the film means for us to sympathize with Sarah but, seeing as how we only see Sylvia being polite and friendly to Sarah, it’s a bit difficult to really be on Sarah’s side. If anything, in this case, Sarah seems like the bad and judgmental neighbor. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, though. Someone breaks into Sylvia’s house and strangles her. And Sarah comes to suspect that the culprit might have been …. JACK!

This Lifetime movie had a fairly interesting mystery. I will admit that I figured out what was going on long before Sarah did but then again, I’ve probably watched a lot more Lifetime films than she has. The best thing about the film is that everyone lived in an extremely big house. It’s always nice to see that the Lifetime tradition of huge suburban houses is still alive. I also liked the fact that Sarah had enough money that she could deal with her grief by painting for six months. There’s no tragedy so great that it can’t lead to more leisure time.

That said, Sarah was not a particularly likable protagonist. I think if the film had been set a year after her husband’s death, as opposed to just six months, I probably would have had more sympathy for both her and her daughter. As it was, it seemed like Sarah’s daughter was trying to force her mom to move on too quickly and it also seemed like Sarah was constantly allowing herself to be pushed into a situation for which she wasn’t emotionally ready. Jamie-Lynne Sigler’s character was actually far more interesting than Sarah’s. Maybe Sigler and Teri Polo should have switched roles. There’s no way Sigler would have allowed herself to be guilted into speed dating.

Oh well. It may not have been a perfect film but at least the houses were lovely to look at.

Ah, a friend who kills.

Now, on the one hand, I guess you could make an argument that it would be good to have a friend who kills because then you wouldn’t ever have to kill. You could just ask your friend to do a favor for you. I can certainly understand why some people would see that as being one of the benefits that comes with having a friend who kills. Myself, if I had a friend who killed, I would want to take them with me whenever I knew I’m going to have stand in a long line. I mean, God knows that patience is a virtue but sometimes, you really just need to speed things up.

On the other hand, having a friend who kills probably means that you have to spend a lot of time cleaning up after them. And if your friend is one of those people who kills in the middle of the night, you might not got much sleep. Instead, they’ll constantly be calling you at 4 in the morning, asking you to bring a garbage bag and some bleach to a house on the other side of town. Ultimately, it just doesn’t seem to be worth the trouble.

Lifetime’s Friends Who Kill stars Sarah Fisher as Lacy, a high school student who is struggling with failing grades and the recent divorce of her parents. When Lacy first meets Cassie (Alexa Rose Steele), it seems like Cassie is just the type of fun-loving, parent’s-signature-forging friend that she needs but it turns out that Cassie is actually a bit unstable. She’s a friend who kills, though she doesn’t really kill that many people in this film. She does beat a lot of people up. She puts one person in a coma and she hits another with a shovel. She does commit one murder with a hockey stick and it looks like pretty messy. I hate it when murders are committed in a living room because it totally ruins all the furniture. I mean, just try getting a blood stain out of a couch.

Harper (Reha Sandill), who was Lacy’s best friend until Cassie showed up, tries to warn Lacy that Cassie isn’t as good of a friend as she says she is but Lacy is ready for a dangerous friend and who can blame her. Lacy’s mother (Natalie Brown) is too busy dealing with the fallout of her divorce to really notice the murderous gleam in Cassie’s eyes. These things happen when you’ve got a friend who kills, I suppose.

Friends Who Kill suffers a bit because it’s never quite clear why Cassie wants to be Lacy’s friend or why Lacy’s mom is so quick to assume the worst when Cassie frames Harper for revealing the circumstances of the divorce. This is one of those films where you quickly get frustrated because no one seems to have much common sense. Everyone is strangely quick to believe anything that Cassie says and you can understand why Harper gets so annoyed with Lacy. On the plus side, fans of Degrassi will be happy to see that this film features two members of that classic show’s cast. On Degrassi, Sarah Fisher played ultra-religious Becky while Alexa Steele played by Angela Jeremiah and Tori Santamaria. Steele does a pretty good job playing up the sociopathic side of Cassie.

In the end, this film has a good message. Friends who kill may seem like a solution to all of life’s troubles but, in the end, they’re just not worth the trouble.