My Professor’s Deadly Secret (2024 Lifetime)
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Cast: Maddison Bullock, Ryan Francis, Nicole Marie Johnson
Director: Ryan Francis
Writer(s): Maddison Bullock
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Synopsis (via Lifetime)
Grieving Helen and her daughter Lauren, at odds, probe the death of Helen’s sister, a top math professor. With the help of Lauren’s math tutor Kristy, they uncover a shocking familial betrayal. Maddison Bullock, Nicole Marie Johnson, Kayden Tokarski, James Hyde, Ryan Francis, Nancy Harding star (2024).
Recap/Wine Thoughts
Inspired by True Events.
The movie starts with some chalkboard scribbles about Chaos Theory. The professor reviews her work. A hooded figure sneaks up behind her. She falls down dead. The figure checks her pulse and leaves.
Helen and John are a married couple who host a memorial for the professor, Helen’s sister Trish. Their daughter, Lauren, was especially close to Aunt Trish. She grieves the loss of her best friend and woman who she loved more than her own mother. (It seems like Helen is a bit jealous of their relationship.) Lauren is convinced that her Aunt Trish’s death wasn’t a heart attack but murder,
The outburst at the memorial causes Helen to research her sister’s past more and ask the Dean of the Math department to hand over Trish’s personal journals. The Dean tells Helen it is university property and they won’t be handing anything over.
Lauren returns to school and seems bored with her classes until she meets Kristy, a guest speaker. They later run into one another at the grocery store, and Lauren is enthralled. Kristy is embarrassed when her card is declined; Helen picks up the tab. Helen invites Kristy over for dinner, and they have a pleasant conversation. We learn Kristy was given up for adoption and grew up in the foster care system. She relied on math as a constant in her life. Math was Kristy’s first language.
Helen and John are so impressed with Kristy that they hire her as a tutor. This isn’t the best idea because although Lauren likes Kristy, John also seems interested. John and Helen’s marriage is tense, and they sleep in separate beds.
In the middle of the night, Helen is haunted by her sister’s ghost. The ghost writes math problems on the bathroom mirror. (Which is not very scary if you don’t understand what it means.) While Helen has trouble sleeping, someone beaks into the garage and steals some of Trish’s files.
For their first tutoring session, Helen and Lauren go outside and do cartwheels and relate it to math somehow. Lauren becomes overwhelmed with emotions and shares with Kristy how special her Aunt Trish was to her. They theorize about the potential murder and Kristy pitches that someone killed Aunt Trish to publish her lucrative journals.
Kristy advises Helen on dealing with the Dean of the Math department. She encourages Helen to keep fighting for those journals. Helen takes Kristy to her dance studio to show her what she is passionate about. Dance and math couldn’t be further apart in interests. Kristy looks for similarities to help Lauren and Helen relate to one another more. Helen has such a good time with Kristy. She forgets all about a dinner she set up with her husband. John is PISSED and leaves a passive-aggressive note saying he “went out for a drink.” He ignores Helen’s calls.
At the bar, John runs into… KRISTY. She claims to be studying Chaos Theory. Kristy seems to think John is sweet and apologizes for ruining his dinner plans. Kristy also mentions an advisor who stole her ideas. (Probs, Trish. ) Helen stops by the bar and sees them talking. She gets the wrong idea and decides to fight with John when he comes home. They are interrupted by Lauren, who screams that she wishes her mother was dead instead of Aunt Trish. (I think Lauren wins by being the worst.)
Lauren talks with the Dean of the Math Department and gets the list of her Aunt’s PhD Candidates. Kristy is, or course, one of them. Lauren confronts Kristy, but she explains it away with the “Birthday paradox.” Kristy tells Lauren that she should be worried about her mother’s lack of connection with her.
Helen is frazzled and having a hard time holding it all together. She finds Aunt Trish’s photo in the trash and almost misses teaching her dance class. Kristy is in the class, and Helen confronts Kristy about the bar meeting. Kristy breaks down and admits that she feels like someone is following her and trying to steal her work. She values Helen as a mother and would never interfere with that. Helen feels so bad for suspecting Kristy of sleeping with her husband she invites her to STAY THE NIGHT?!?!?
John comes home and hears the shower running. He gets naked and jumps in the shower, thinking it is his wife, but it is Kristy. John claims it is a setup because there was a note on the counter. Kristy rushes out of the house in tears. Helen kicks John out.
Susan, John’s mother, is a co-owner of the dance studio. She isn’t a fan of Kristy. Her dislike intensified after the sexual assault allegations. (I’m not a fan of this type of storyline.) As Susan closes up the shop, someone sneaks up behind her and strangles her with a ballet slipper. Police question Helen as a primary suspect.
Lauren and Kristy spend the night studying during the murder and have a solid alibi at the university campus. (Well, Kristy hasn’t been with Lauren for about an hour.) Kristy also talks to the police detective and implicates Helen in the murders of Trish and Susan.
Helen starts replaying scenes in her mind and runs a DNA test on a strand of Kristy’s hair. Kristy is Aunt Trish’s daughter; she had given up for adoption. Helen rushes to find Lauren.
At the university campus, Kristy pulls a gun on Helen. Trish stole math ideas and took credit from her own daughter. Kristy poisoned the chalk and overdid the dosage. She has been trying to cover things up but continually making it worse. While having a breakdown might not be the best moment to present a DNA test, that is what Helen does.
Kristy shoots the gun, but it doesn’t go off. Lauren knocks Kristy out with her aunt’s abacus. The police take Kristy away.
One month later, Lauren goes off to college, and it seems like Helen and John are cool now?
Side Note/Stray Thoughts
I mentioned this in the recap, but I’m not sure I’m on board with depictions of false sexual assault allegations as a plot point anymore. It seems like an outdated trope. What do you all think?
Overall rating
Number of Kills: 🔪🔪 (2 knives)
Enjoyment Level (1-5 scale)
🍷🍷 (2 Glasses of Wine)
Should you watch it?
Put a Cork in It (Skip!)
What did you think of the movie? Let me know in the comments or on social media at @LifetimeUncorked and @patrickmiguel.
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*Photo Credit: © 2024 A&E Television Networks, LLC
