Psycho In-Law (2017 Lifetime)

Psycho In-Law (2017 Lifetime)

Stars: Katie Leclerc, Catherine Dyer, Mike Faiola

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Synopsis (via Lifetime)

After Brock and his daughter lose his wife in a tragic accident, he falls in love with Tina, his wife, to be. Tina does everything to make Brock’s daughter like her more as a mom. Brock’s mother in law Joyce does not approve of the marriage and does everything she can to stop it even if it means plotting to kill somebody.

Thoughts

Interior designer, Tina, is dating a single widowed father named Brock. He has a daughter named Harper and a mother in law named Joyce. Joyce is his dead wife’s mother, who strangely is very involved in Brock’s love life. Tina loves Brock so much that she attempts to play nice with Joyce at a family party, even though Joyce is a total bitch. (Belittling Tina’s profession and reacting angrily to the news that the couple is getting engaged.) Joyce doesn’t approve of Brock’s choices and wants Harper to have the best mother possible. According to Joyce, Tina isn’t it. (I think Joyce wishes Harper was her child.)

Joyce’s meddling and controlling personality are on full display, getting Harper ready for school. She hides the school schedule (Harper wears pajamas to school on NOT pajama day.), and it makes Tina look incompetent. Joyce drives a wedge into Tina and Harper’s relationship by emotionally manipulating the child and Tina with a hairbrush incident. (It is long and overly complicated. Nothing like Mommie Dearest and the hairbrush tho.)

Tina brings everything to Brock and tells him Joyce is too involved. Brock his deceased wife’s accident. She died in a car crash, and Joyce was driving. Tina feels like an Asshole. Later we get a flashback to Joyce and her daughter in the car; the relationship was on the rocks too. They argument cause the car crash, and her daughter was trying to place boundaries with Joyce.

Joyce hires a shady private investigator and places fraud charges posing as an ex-colleague at Tina’s interior design business. Tina misses picking up Harper from a playdate, and Joyce seizes the opportunity to make herself look great, and Tina looks terrible. Then she sets up Tina to be with her ex-boyfriend Chad and sends Brock to catch them together. Brock gets jealous and questions if Tina wants to be with him. Tina realizes it is a set up from Joyce because Brock had cookies with him.

Tina’s mother comes to town, and they go to the final wedding dresses fitting. Ellen (Tina’s sister says the title of the movie in this scene, and I’m dead.) After trying on dresses, the women meet up with Joyce and Harper for afternoon lunch. When Tina’s mother talks about family and asks Harper to call her Grandma, Joyce gives her the death stare. The lunch is interrupted by a phone call Tina’s friend tracked down the IP address of where the fraudulent emails were sent. Ellen suggests to Joyce that Dwayne be Tina’s lawyer in the case.

Dwayne realizes that his wife has been overstepping and tells his wife to go to the police and turn herself in. Dwyane tells Joyce that he will go to the police if she won’t. He gets so overworked that he has a heart attack and dies. Joyce intentionally dumps his pills in the bath as he dies in front of her. She calls Brock to help her and acts distraught over the whole thing. Joyce asks him to stay the night.

It is the day of the wedding. Tina gets a call that clears her of all wrongdoing. Someone stole Tina’s co-worker’s identity. (We know it is Joyce.) Ellen realizes something is off and starts franticly typing on her laptop. She finds that Joyce’s husband Dwayne, represented the person accused of the crime. Ellen lures Joyce to a meeting, pretending it is about Harper.

Joyce arrives, and Ellen shares her findings while recording the conversation with her phone. She accuses Joyce of murdering Dwyane and demands that she admit everything to Tina. Knowing she’s caught, Joyce cries and then throws Ellen out of a second-story window. Instead of doing anything with the body, Joyce grabs a bottle of rat poison and dumps it in her purse.

At the wedding, Joyce puts the rat poison in a glass of champagne and delivers it to the bride. Tina’s mom sends it back to Joyce. It is a great moment. I wish Joyce has drunk it, but she is too smart for that. Instead, she grabs a cake knife, the most non-threatening knife after butter knife, and heads to the bridal suite.

Tina grabs a lamp and swings it at Joyce. The two fight, and Tina is almost strangled to death but is saved by her mother. Ellen somehow survives the fall, and the wedding is canceled. (Obviously.)

Tina and Brock get married at the courthouse while Joyce talks to walls in the mental asylum.

Side Note: Waitress,

Minority Report: Client

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Overall rating

🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪 (5 Knives)

🍷🍷🍷 (3 glasses of wine required.)