The Stepchild (2016 Lifetime)
Cast: Lauren Holly, Paul Johansson, Sarah Fisher, Keenan Tracey
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Synopsis (via Lifetime)
Ashley suspects her father’s partner was behind a brutal home invasion.
Thoughts
A little girl witnesses a murder and has a bloody snow globe—Flash to the little girl who is grown up. Her name is Ashley, and her father’s recent death has pulled memories from deep within her. She works with Dr. Vaughn to work through her trauma.
Detectives also speak with Ashley, but she has trouble recalling details. Beth takes care of her stepdaughter/maybe niece(?) Ashley, and takes her back to the childhood home. John is also living in the house and is helping Beth settle the estate. Might they be married? The relationships here are more confusing than they should be.
Ashley’s boyfriend Michael visits her for two seconds, hugs her, and then leaves. He is cute, so that is why I’m mentioning it.
Ashley looks through the old things of her father and is rude to John. She screams at him for sitting in her father’s chair and working in his office. Ashley thinks that John is stealing her father’s business and suspects Beth might be getting taken advantage of and confronts her stepmother. (Confirmed now, Beth is also not officially dating John, but she probably is.)
Linda has some information, but she ends up dead, and Ashley finds the body. It triggers more concerns from Beth and John. Beth admits that Ashley’s mother had schizophrenia and killed herself. Ashley found her mother in the bathtub. Ashley has seen a lot of dead bodies.
Michael looks into John and confirms Ashley’s suspicions. John’s wife died under mysterious circumstances, and the wife’s sister filed a law suit. Michael promises to look into it; the only problem is John overhears the conversation and goes after Michael.
Ashley chases after Michael and gets into a car accident. The doctors blame her medication and want to admit her into a full-time mental hospital. Detectives visit her and give her a note from Michael saying he is leaving for LA. Ashley knows that it can’t be true. The detective agrees and wants to know what happened. He pretty much blames Ashley again for the murder.
Ashley realizes she needs to clear her name and sneaks out of the hospital before the doctors can admit her into a long-term care facility. They call John, and he is enraged. Beth overhears HIS conversation and knows he is a bad guy. She hits John with the snowglobe.
Ashley rushes in and sees John’s body on the ground and Beth standing over his body. Michael is right behind her and locks her in the house. Seeing the snowball triggers her memory. Ashley found her father on the ground, murdered by the snowglobe. Beth and Michael killed him because he caught them having an affair. They staged it as a break-in.
Beth shoots Michael and then comes after Ashley. She plans to frame Michael for the murders. Ashley runs around the house and sets off the house alarm, signaling the police. As Beth is strangeling Ashley to death, Beth is shot by John. Ashley apologizes to John for being a jerk to him the whole movie.
Ashley has no one and is alone now. (This is sad!) She runs her father’s company now with John (who survived) while wearing a sleeveless Wednesday Adams costume.
Side Note
Minority Report: Therapist.
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Overall rating
🔪🔪 (2 Knives)
🍷🍷🍷 (3 glasses of wine required.)
*Photo Credit: © 2016 Lifetime
