Well, here’s a movie I would have completely missed if I didn’t keep track of the names attached to so many of the films I cover on here. For a start, this is an honest-to-Dude Lifetime movie that managed to make it to cinemas here in Australia, either because we’re still starved for new features to throw on the big screen or (more likely) because it was filmed and takes place in this country. There’s also the lead actress, Claire van der Boom, who I technically last saw in Palm Beach, but who I mainly remember for being in the glorified Nikon advert Love Is Now.
And then there’s the director, Vic Sarin. That name may not mean anything to anyone else, but apart from directing several other Lifetime productions, he’s also the director behind the quintessential rapture movie and the grandfather of modern Christiansploitation with the original Left Behind. That’s a trinity of warning signs without seeing a frame of the film itself, and I’ll be honest, I went in expecting a trainwreck. And while I didn’t exactly receive said trainwreck, I can safely say that this isn’t all that good either.
As I’m not too familiar with the proper production aesthetics of these Lifetime movies (truth be told, a lot of what I know about this sub-genre is out of pop culture osmosis), I don’t know whether this is meant to be graded on a curve because it’s built for the small screen… but considering that’s not where this ended up, I can only call it how I literally see it and deem this subpar in the visual department.
It certainly looks like something meant to be watched on TV, but it’s not even modern-day comparable-to-cinematic-production quality. Instead, between the sterile colour palette, the awkward blocking, and editing that fits better as a commercial for the resort the story takes place in than as actual narrative, it looks like cheapy TV, like I’m about to watch bogans get into a slap fight with each other.
Moving past the presentation, the writing and acting at its centre do not carry this story as they should. It’s a mystery drama about an American couple on vacation whose daughter goes missing. The acting across the board is rather mediocre, with van der Boom in particular failing to impress as the central presence of the film, and there seems to be an utter lack of tension because of how shoddily the story is structured. The way writer Shanrah Wakefield weaves this mystery basically amounts to a family-sized platter of red herrings, where any attempts at a ‘twist’ fall short because the scene doesn’t even finish before they’re shown to be red herrings. No time to let the dread and paranoia sink in; just speeding past them to fill up the under-90-minute run time.
But that on its own could be forgiven; most mystery yarns involve a lot of misdirects, and I’ll admit that not all of them are that short-lived. Where the lack of engagement really sank in for me was with the revelation that all those aborted misdirects tease at plot resolutions that would be far better than what we actually get. Across the myriad of convenient coincidences, the script hints at things like human trafficking, blackmail, gang activity, and drastic measures after failing to conceive one’s own child. None of these are given much more than ‘sorry but your thrills are in another castle’, and while the eventual finale is soap opera levels of melodramatic, the fact all possibilities share the same root (the couple being brought to the resort by a random email gifting them a holiday… that neither of them paid for, nor entered a contest to win) is so contrived that even the film itself has to point it out. Why do filmmakers keep thinking this is a good idea?
At the end of the day, this being as cheap as it is or it somehow being deemed worthy of theatrical release isn’t even my real issue with this whole thing. It’s that, even when taking into account the limitations of its budget and target audience, it still fails to deliver as a thriller. The pacing doesn’t let any of the potential culprits stand out, the ultimate reason for all this is unsatisfying (and desperate to exonerate any and all women involved, because this is Lifetime), and with how dull the drama is throughout, I can’t even say it was worth the ride getting to the end. It’s just this big beige slab of nothing.
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