Psycho Granny (2019 Lifetime)

Psycho Granny (2019 Lifetime)

Cast: Robin Riker, Brooke Newton, Matthew Lawrence

Listen to the Lifetime Uncorked Podcast here!

Please buy me a coffee (or glass of 🍷 ) Support Lifetime Uncorked by leaving a $3 tip.

Synopsis (via Lifetime)

After Samantha’s mother passes away, her spirits are lifted with the sudden appearance of her long lost Grandmother, Colleen. All is well until Colleen’s dark past reveals itself and Sam is forced to fight for her life.

Thoughts

Granny serves a turkey dinner and gives a speech sloshing around a glass of wine. (A woman after my own heart.) She tells her family that she is disappointed in them and spills the tea on all of them. Oh, she also poisons them all, she is giving to the speech to a table of dead people. Next, we see the granny going through obituaries while drinking tea. She is on the hunt for her next victim, Samantha.

Samantha is a mess, but how could she be with Matthew Lawrence as her husband?!?! Sam is pregnant after a slew of miscarriages. She regrets not telling her mother that she was pregnant before she died. (Sam also regrets not being able to drink a glass of Pino, amiright?)
They go to finish paperwork with a really heartless Lawyer. At the funeral home, granny ( now Colleen) shows up and startles Sam. They bond over grieve and realize that they are grieving over the same person. Colleen is posing as Sam’s mother’s biological mother. Later that night, the rude Lawyer is going through some paperwork and gets attacked by the Colleen. Then, Colleen calls Sam and sets up a lunch date!

Before going to lunch, Colleen goes through her book of families and tells them how they have all disappointed her. She has killed a lot of families because they didn’t live up to her standards. Sam invites her friend, Amiee, to lunch, but she declines because she has to go get her bangs trimmed. (Her hair is awful.) Lunch happens, and it goes well! They share memories, and Colleen tells Sam a made-up story about why she had the baby up for adoption. Colleen asks Sam if she is pregnant, but Sam doesn’t disclose that information.

Colleen gets recognized by one of Sam’s neighbors. The neighbor is like, “Helen?!?! Gurl!” Colleen is like, “Not me, byeeeee.”

Sam joins Colleen for tea. No tea is spilled, except for when Sam goes to the bathroom is explicitly told not to flush the toilet. Colleen then pretends to have to go to the bathroom and takes a sample of the pee-pee water??? (for a pregnancy test???) While she is doing that, Sam looks around at family photos in the house and notices they are all different families. (They are the families that Colleen killed.)

Sam has been spending lots of time with Colleen, and they run into Amiee at the park. Stupid Amiee tells Colleen about Sam’s pregnancy, and Colleen is excited and offers to help her with the pregnancy. When Matthew Lawrence finds out that Sam said to Colleen, he gets angry with her for sharing the information with a practical stranger. While Sam and Matthew Lawrence are fighting, Colleen is parked outside their house, stalking them. Matthew Lawrence’s co-worker, Todd, spots her in the car and asks her what she is doing. Colleen stabs him in the neck with a knitting needle. (IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD?!?!)

Matthew Lawrence goes on a work trip and leaves Sam with Colleen. The two bond even more. They drink tea, do massages, and make a baby nursery… in Colleen’s house. Sam is starting to get weirded out by Colleen but is appreciative of her efforts. When Sam isn’t hanging out with Colleen, she is watching Amiee drink wine. Sam tells her friend that Matthew Lawrence and Colleen are both so controlling. She also says that Colleen is weird, and her holistic therapy is creeping her out. Amiee offers to have a friend do a background check and see what is going on this the new granny. Colleen overhears the whole conversation, she is disguised and sitting nearby.

Amiee goes to her friend and finds a bunch of arrests. The friend finds something else from the ’80s, but she won’t have it till the end of the day. Amiee calls Sam and tells her that Colleen is a felon. Since Amiee is stupid, she goes to confront Colleen VERY aggressively. Colleen invites Amiee in for some tea and murder. Colleen smashes Amiee in the head with her tea kettle. After Amiee doesn’t die, she strangles her with a rope in the garage, puts her body in her car, and makes it look like a car accident… somehow. Who cares!

I haven’t mentioned that Colleen talks to a distorted voice while looking at her reflection. This is an interesting depiction of auditory hallucination in the film that I haven’t seen before.

Matthew Lawrence argues more with Sam and is going on another work trip, but before he can go, Colleen syringes him in the neck. This gives her more time to spend with Sam. While knitting and talking at Colleen’s house, Amiee’s phone goes off. Sam is like, why is Amiee’s phone here? And Colleen brushes it off, saying that she was over planning a baby shower. Sam isn’t buying the lies this time and steals an 80’s family photo and notices a man is cropped out of the picture. Too bad, she doesn’t find Matthew Lawrence hooked up to an IV drip in the nursery.

Sam gets a call from Jill, Amiee’s friend. Colleen is not Sam’s grandmother, and she has a daughter named Melanie. Apparently, Colleen was on a trip in the ’80s with her husband, and he went missing and then gave up their baby. Foul play was suspected but never proven. Sam finds Melanie and tells her that she knows her birth mother and is in danger. Melanie is like…. “I don’t care and get inside. It looks like it is going to rain” (???)

It does actually start raining while Sam is driving home. Sam is worried that she hasn’t heard from Matthew Lawrence and surprised to find Colleen with a rag of chloroform. Colleen starts roasting all of Sam’s friends and admits to killing them, but she did it for the family after all. Sam is tied to a chair and brings up Melanie. Sam asks what Colleen will do if she and her baby don’t live up to her standard of perfection. Colleen unties Sam to give her some medicine, and Sam punches Colleen in the face. THEN, Melanie actually shows up and fights Colleen. They struggle. Sam eventually knocks out Colleen with a tea kettle. (So symbolic!)

Melanie feels sorry for her mother and apologizes to Sam for all the trouble. They hug. Matthew Lawrence is wheeled in and tells Sam that he loves her. They kiss,

Colleen is in a mental hospital and sets her sights on the doctor’s family as her next victims.

Side Note

Minority Report: Neglectful POC mother with no name… Amiee’s friend, Jill.

Alternate Title: Lineage of Lies

MarVista, my fav production company at Lifetime.

So much wine drinking in this movie, I had to add extra glass.

I also added an extra knife for ALL THE SHADE.

Don’t forget to listen to the Lifetime Uncorked Podcast available on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Donate to keep the blog and podcast going 😊

Overall rating
🔪🔪🔪 (3 Knives)
🍷🍷🍷🍷 (4 glasses of wine required)