I’ve been taking a break from my soaps (The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful) over the last few months. After a couple of soap-free weeks, I started feeling the need to watch Lifetime movies; apparently I was craving something to fill that void.
I have now watched eight Lifetime movies – well, technically six, with two Lifetime-like movies – and I’m here to tell you some are better than others. A few are the cheesy, eye-rolly films you might expect, but a couple were actually quite decent. Here’s what’s what.
1) Lizzie Bordon Takes an Ax
I don’t have Lifetime. We currently have YouTube TV, which does not play nicely with Lifetime. So, I googled the best Lifetime movies on Netflix and went through them. I’ll start with the actual Lifetime movies, and then the two honorable mentions.
After watching one of the quasi Lifetime movies I’ll get to later, I was intrigued and wanted more, and Lizzie Bordon takes an Ax was the first official Lifetime-on-Netflix movie I came across when googling. I saw Lizzie Bordon and Christina Ricci (I LOVE her), and was like, done. Stopped reading, started watching.
Lizzie Bordon Takes an Ax is based on the true story of Lizzie Borden, a young woman who allegedly killed her father and stepmother with an ax. I was familiar with the story because it took place in Fall Rivers, Massachusetts, which is close to where I went to college in Rhode Island.
It also stars Clea DuVall (Graham in But I’m a Cheerleader, which I demand you go and watch right this second if you haven’t already, yes even if that means you stop reading this post) and Gregg Henry also has a role (Mitchum Huntsburger in Gilmore Girls).
The film was very well written, keeping to what we know about the true story as closely as possible, and keeping the viewer guessing and speculating. It prompted me to look up the real murders and read about them.
2) Perfect Sisters
This one is also based on a chilling true story. Two sisters decide to murder their alcoholic mother. The movie stars Abigail Breslin, who’s always a delight to watch, and Georgie Henley, whom I hadn’t seen before but also enjoyed.
Their mother is Mira Sorvino (Romy in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, another amazing movie to watch when you’re done with But I’m a Cheerleader). She’s fantastic and she shows up again in the next movie on this list.
Perfect Sisters makes you feel conflicting emotions for these girls. Yes, they’ve been handed a shitty deck with their mother, but not to the point where murder seems like a viable option. At times they seem more concerned with how their mother’s alcoholism affects how popular they are at school, and if they can afford to wear the right clothes.
So, while part of you likes the girls and wants to root for them, it’s hard to justify what they decide to do and how stupid they are going about it. They are not really painted as the victims.
This one has an excellent ending, and it also prompted me to look up the true story. Which I will not give away here.
3) Indiscretion
While the above movies seemed to be regular movies that just happened to be on Lifetime, Indiscretion, as you may guess from the title, has much more of a quintessential Lifetime feel.
This one stars Mira Sorvino and I almost gave up watching about 15 minutes in but I’m so glad I stuck this one out. This is a great example of why you should go outside your comfort zone once in awhile, because you might be surprised. I totally had this one pegged as a typical, terrible Lifetime movie.
This woman is married to a senator and is unappreciated, can’t even get him to have sex with her, so she has an affair with a way younger, super hot guy (who she is married to in real life and has four children with, you go girl!).
The ending is pretty much what brought it all home to me as a complex storyline worth thinking about, and not a two-dimensional, to-be-tossed-aside Lifetime movie.
4) Teenage Bank Heist
And here’s where it starts to go downhill, folks.
When I saw the title for this one I felt optimistic. I really enjoyed the 2001 movie Sugar & Spice about high school cheerleaders who rob a bank. In fact, Mena Suvari’s look in that movie inspired me to grow my hair out super long and dye it a dark reddish brown, which I did. It’s also the look I once again sport today.
Anyway, the optimism shattered pretty quickly. Small spoiler – the bank robbery happens right at the beginning, with a teenager girl present. I thought she would see how well the robbery went for the criminals, maybe they wouldn’t get caught, and then she would be inspired to do the same. I thought that would be a cool plot. But no, it didn’t go down like that.
Bad writing, bad acting, storyline that didn’t make sense, and the ending made even less sense. I won’t ruin the details for you if you’re thinking about checking it out but…you could probably skip this one.
5) Playdate
This one stars the woman who plays Kash’s wife in the early episodes of Shameless, Marguerite Moreau, as Emily.
Emily has a husband and young daughter and they live in surburbia. When a single woman moves next door with her teenage son and young son, Emily and her husband are almost creepily interested in them, even though it’s clear the viewers are supposed to think the neighbors are the creepy ones.
But Emily and her family practically force this woman to have dinner with them, insist on carpooling together to school, and Emily even looks at this woman’s prescription pill bottles in her bathroom at one point. But of course it turns out it’s the neighbors who are hiding a dark secret, not our protagonist.
I don’t have too much to say about this one other than it was very meh and could barely hold my attention.
6) Kristy
Kristy has a psychological thriller feel. It’s about a college student named Justine who stays on campus over Thanksgiving alone and ends up being stalked by a cult that’s into killing women they call “Kristy” and making snuff films.
This one wasn’t bad, and my interest increased as it went along. This girl is alone, getting stalked, for the majority of the film, so it’s not super heavy on the dialogue. She’s been thrown into this terrifying world by herself and we get to watch as she, outnumbered by her enemies, struggles to survive.
If you mixed a horror film with a Lifetime movie, this is what you would get. Not bad, not bad. Better than Playdate and significantly better than Teenage Bank Heist.
Okay, these next two are not technically Lifetime movies but Lifetimeesque:
7) My Teacher, My Obsession
After I started watching these movies Netflix kept trying to get me to watch this one and I eventually did.
This was. . .pretty good. I’d put it in line with Kristy: better than some on this list, and not as good as others.
You can probably get a good grasp on the plot from the title – a girl is obsessed with her high school teacher. More specifically, this teacher and his daughter, Riley, move to a new town for a fresh start (heh) and Riley for some reason struggles to make friends even though she’s sweet, sociable, and gorgeous.
She befriends loner Kyla, who is the one obsessed with Riley’s father/the teacher to a frightening degree. It turns out she’d exhibited this behavior before, having been obsessed with a prior history teacher.
8) Fatal Fashion
I’m going out of order here because this was actually the first movie I watched on this list which prompted me to keep going. It also motivated me to watch more new movies and TV shows in 2019 in general, instead of binge watching the same stuff over and over again.
It’s funny how I ended up watching Fatal Fashion. As I mentioned before, I’d decided to take a soap break, and I saw an actress from B&B tweet she was in this movie and I like her so I checked it out.
Linsey Godfrey plays fashion photographer Jennifer who has a mental breakdown after becoming obsessed with a model and so she moves and starts teaching high school. Where she meets a student who she gets into modeling and…you see where this is going.
Much like with My Teacher, My Obsession, the protagonist has exhibited psychotic behavior before and we’re seeing history repeat itself. I’d sort of like more of an explanation for why these women behave in this way other than they’ve done it before, but that’s okay.
After watching this movie I was like, that was not an amazing movie, but it was exactly what I needed at the time. To just turn off my brain and engage in something frivolous.
And I think that’s what Lifetime movies are really about. They’re not meant to be these complex masterpieces that will change your life. They’re a brief escape from reality, a guilty pleasure, a silly indulgence.
Recap: what to watch
I’d indicated in the title I’d let you know which ones to watch and which ones to skip. If you’re still on the fence, or you just skimmed through most of the above, here’s the breakdown:
Definitely watch no matter what: Lizzie Bordon Takes an Ax, Perfect Sisters.
Probably watch if you tend to like Lifetime-type movies: Indiscretion, Fatal Fashion.
Maaaaaaaybe watch, you’ll have to decide for yourself here: Kristy; My Teacher, My Obsession.
Don’t bother, folks: Teenage Bank Heist, Playdate