Murder in the Suburbs (2020 Lifetime)

Murder in the Suburbs (2020 Lifetime)

Cast: Nicky Whelan, Anna Hutchison, Alexandria DeBerry, Trevor Stines

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Synopsis (via Lifetime)

While on vacation, a happy-go-lucky family become the unsuspected target of a grieving mother and the mystery surrounding her family’s tragic death

Thoughts

Teens have an elaborate house party with a lot of confetti. Katie is drunk and gets a call from her mom to come home. She leaves the party with her boyfriend Rick; she can barely stand up. Rick gives his friend Jared a ride home too. While taking an Instagram story, they swerve and cause another car to crash. They flee the scene and leave a woman in the other vehicle screaming for help as her family dies. The woman sees a bumper sticker as the car drives away.

Katie, her mom Amy, and brother Luke rent a lake house to get away for a while. Katie brakes up with Rick because he stopped talking to her. Katie and her mom have a heart to heart about boys and her dead father. Amy seems to have a good relationship with her kids; she even tells her son to no hack anyone. (Haha, okay?) Her hair, on the other hand, is not so nice, think Daryl Hannah in Splash. (Awful extensions.)

The next morning the family is woken up by a woman named Megan Meyers. She is the owner of the house they are renting and is also the woman from the accident who lost her family. She tells them about the unsolved hit and run and explains that she rents out her house that used to belong to her family. Megan seems desperate for friends, but no one can stand to be around her because it is too sad. Amy vows to become BFF’s with Megan. (She can relate because her friends abandoned her when her husband died.) A woman named Gretchen warns Amy that Megan is unstable. 

While playing bags (or cornhole depending on where you’re from.) with her Rick and Jared, things get awkward. Rick admits that he has been ignoring Katie because they were the ones that got into a car accident with Megan’s family and are responsible for their deaths. Katie is horrified that they would leave the scene of a crime. Rick forces them to make a pact of silence. (I guess Katie and Rick are back together now? Nothing like murder to being a couple together. I can’t wait for that wedding speech.)

Katie starts getting text messages from someone who knows about the accident. (Text messages with devil emojis!) 

Megan goes to the police and tells them that she suspects the people renting her house killed her family. (She recognizes their car.) The police officer tells her that she isn’t credible because of her memory being inconsistent and also because she accused another family of the same thing. This time Megan is right. She goes to her family’s graves and promises to find their killer. She later goes into the garage and has a panic attack looking at the bumper sticker and having flashbacks.

Katie and her brother Luke go to another elaborate suburban party. This time with hot tuns and beer pong! Luke gets too drunk and cries in a laundry room with Katie over missing their father.

Meanwhile, Megan and Amy drink wine and make dinner together. Megan ominously chops vegetables and pounds out some chicken cutlets. They have a nice candlelit dinner, and Megan loads Amy up on white wine. Then they watch old movies and eat Oreos. (I think I need to be friends with Megan.) While in the bathroom, Amy finds a bunch of medication and realizes Gretchen may have been right. 

Jared goes out on the lake in the middle of the night and rows in the dark. He is run down by a motorboat. An old gay couple walking their dogs, don’t find his body. (But we see his sweatshirt washed onshore!) Nikki, his girlfriend, realizes he is missing and accuses Katie of sleeping with her boyfriend. Katie tells Nikki everything. Nikki promises to go to the police if Jared doesn’t turn up the next morning. She doesn’t get the opportunity because she gets killed in a hot tub.

The next morning, Katie gets a text from “Nikki,” saying that she found Jared, and everything is GTG! Katie can’t keep the secret any longer and wants to come clean to her mother. Rick is against it but realizes that they need to face the consequences of their actions.

Amy and Luke go out on Megan’s boat and find Nikki’s body. Amy calls the sherriff and rushes to find Katie before anything happens to her. When she gets back to the rental home, Amy finds Megan sitting in the dark by a fireplace. Megan wants to know the truth and accuses Katie and her friends. Hacker Luke finds the Instagram story that they recorded and pulls it up on his phone. They realize that Rick caused the accident, and he is the one who has Katie. He kidnapped her because she was going to tell the police and is also responsible for the murder of his friends Jared and Nikki. (Who were also going to the police.) 

TWIST. I was not expecting this, and I always suspect the boyfriend. Rick ties Katie up and has a gun. Megan shows up and starts untying Katie. Rick catches her, and he offers to shoot her so she can be with her family again. Megan tells Rick that if the paramedics had been called, her family would have survived. This distracts Rick long enough for Amy to hit him in the head with a shovel. Then Megan shoots him with his gun as he wrestles with Katie.

Three months later, the blonde ladies drink champagne on Megan’s boat and talk about the future. Amy looks insane. Her hair is TERRIBLE. The end!

Side Note

Minority Report: Jared, Police Sherrif Lopez, and Nikki.

Also known as Secrets at the Lake

This movie is a wannabe I Know What You Did Last Summer but without Ryan Phillippe. I mean, Trevor Stines doesn’t even take his shirt off!?!?!

I liked the music direction in this movie. Suspenseful and fun. 

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Overall rating

🔪🔪🔪🔪 (4 Knives)

🍷🍷🍷🍷 (4 glasses of wine required.)

*Photo Credit: © 2020 Lifetime