Letterboxd — Your life in film

There’s a scene where Antonio Sabàto, Jr. dispatches some killer ants and then quips “it’s no picnic, eh?” which is all I need to call this movie an unqualified success.

they said “shit” in a Lifetime movie 🤭

Yes, at the end of the day it’s just a high concept fast food ad, but I do genuinely admire their commitment to the bit: for all intents and purposes this is a real Lifetime movie, condensed to hit all the necessary beats within 16 minutes and played with only the slightest of winks. It’s entirely unnecessary but very much welcome if like me you’re the kind of person who not only knows the difference between My Husband’s Secret Wife and All My Husband’s Wives but has strong opinions about their relative places in the canon.

😐 “No fearsome changes in climate are ahead.” 😑

whispering “enriched toning gel” to myself over and over like it’s “cellar door”

Lydia Look is genuinely fantastic in this as the titular Mistress Hunter, so it’s a real shame she basically disappears from the whole third act. Plus she drives around in a white van full of disguises and then barely ever uses them! I was expecting a Gene Parmesan level of disguises so that was a little disappointing.

"We didn't love each other, exactly, but at night we all slept together in one big stupid pile."

"collage babes"

“That’s a story for another bottle of Chardonnay, but...”

My favorite part of this was either:

1) When the titular Deadly Dance Mom puts on a black beanie and big sunglasses to go incognito while pulling a clandestine op in her giant Suburban with a “DANCE MOM1” vanity plate.

2) When they call in the “Lethal Crime Unit,” which consists of like 5 different mismatched varieties of Central Casting Cop each acting in their own movie.

“We need to talk about Kevin.”

Part 2/? of my accidental marathon of Lifetime movies starring DS9 cast members. If Garak shows up in one of these I'm gonna scream.

To me the main appeal of Lifetime movies - neoclassical melodramas that they are - is the friction between their obligatory surface reinforcement of social norms and the primal passions clawing their way out from underneath. The harder the movie can ricochet between Hallmark and horror, the better.

So while this is surprisingly nuanced for Lifetime, which I guess is admirable in the abstract, in practice that even-handedness only ends up making the film feel more like a shoddy attempt at a "real" movie than the full-bore, productively trashy Lifetime movie it could be.