Lifetime Will Cut a Bitch
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
  Murder of Innocence




"Cradle of Conspiracy" was a tad luckluster, but trust Valerie Bertinelli to put Winnie Cooper to shame and bring on the crazy in "Murder of Innocence."

The movie opens on a stately home surrounded helicopters, cops with shotguns, and SWAT - aka, bad news. We flash to Laurie (Valerie) who is curled up in the fetal position on a child's frilly bed inside the house having childhood flashbacks about anxiety on the playground.

Some hot guy shows up and back we go a couple of years to when he - Matthew - first spotted Laurie. She was a waitress in a restaurant and was giving some guy attitude for complaining about his steak. Matthew is charmed by her tantrum and asks her out. Soon they're frolicking at a family picnic with Matthew's family. His sister asks Laurie what she wants to drink, but she can't make up her mind (warning! warning!).

No bother. These two still get hitched. Laurie can barely handle saying "thank you" to her wedding guests and later has a breakdown when the moving guys ask her where she wants her couch. "I didn't want to do it wrong," she sobs to Matthew.

Laurie spends her newlywed days touching the molding on windows, tapping on crystal with her fingernails, and having flashbacks of her stern mother. She is late to babysit for her neice and nephew, makes up some story about being in an accident, which pisses off her sister-in-law.

Then Laurie has a great idea ...

Let's vacuum in the middle of the night. Also a super idea? Putting a stuffed horse, some books, paper towels, knives, and makeup in the fridge! Maybe after that we could take some lipstick and write words like pain, suffer, and 777 all over the bedroom wall.

Matthew's appears slightly disturbed by the makeup drawings on his wall, but apparently not concerned enough to actually look for Laurie. Instead he starts to hang up the clothes she has strewn around the room, and that's when Laurie jumps out of the closet at him with a knife.

Laurie keeps the crazy under wraps for long enough to ace a job interview and land an admin job. She fucks it up by intentionally spilling Coke all over her computer, but fails to tell Matthew about that little mishap.

Matthew confronts Laurie's parents and asks WTF is wrong with their daughter. Mom is dithery and non-committal; said Laurie had some surgery in 7th grade to correct her big ears but has "been fine ever since." Uh huh, seems that way. Matthew's sister, meanwhile, basically tells him to get the hell out of dodge and dump her crazy ass.

Instead Matthew decides to visit Laurie at work, where her boss tells him that she quit after 2 days and owes the company money for the computer damage. He confronts her at home and she tries to seduce him.

"I can't believe you're thinking about sex with all of this going on," he screams.
"It's the only thing I still know how to do," Laurie says.

Matthew leaves the room to get some air, but finds that all the kitchen cabinets and drawers have been left open. He calls Laurie's parents to tell her he's leaving her, but her dad basically laughs it off and treats it like a marital spat. Nonetheless, Laurie packs up and stays with the 'rents for a few days - basically twirling her hair into knots on furniture covered by plastic.

Laurie goes to Matthews and successfully seduces him this time. She does well the next day when Matthew goes to work (you know, except crank calling his sister ...); she even did laundry! Too bad she folded it and put it in Matthew's drawers soaking wet. She starts drawing 777s in lipstick on her wall again and it's back to mom and dad's she goes, where the crank calls continue.

At this point, I wondered when the whole "murder" part of "murder of innocence" would come into play, but just as I'm thinking that, Laurie heads to Matthew's house with an ice pick and stabs him in the chest. It doesn't quite do the trick because he survives, but at least we're getting somewhere.

One problem -- the cop assigned to the case doesn't believe Matthew, even after Matthew finds the package the ice pick came in in Laurie's bedroom.

Avoiding attempted murder charges is apparently not enough excitement in one day for Laurie, so she calls Matthew and taunts his perfect life. "I'll bet this is the worst thing that's ever happened to you," she says. Uh, getting stabbed in the chest with an ice pick in the middle of the night by my wife? Yeah, that's up there.

Laurie has a few hallucinations about Matthew trying to rape her in broad daylight, so she buys a gun. "Have you ever been treated for a mental illness?" the gun store owner asks. She denies it; guns for everyone!

Laurie gets her own apartment at Northwestern University, but it's not clear if she was actually admitted to the school or just used that as an excuse for her super. Whatever, it doesn't look like she has much time for studying -- she's too busy walking in circles, washing her hands with scalding hot water, writing a hate list, making pay phone crank calls, pushing all the buttons on the elevator like a jerk, and watching static on the TV. Three cheers for academia!

That's apparently not crazy enough because her routine also includes - wait for it - storing copious amounts of raw meat in her fridge.
















She also plays with it, rubs it all over the walls and falls asleep in a pile of garbage. Seriously. Gross. I guess this is why most apartments ask for a security deposit.


















Matthew gets wind of her gun permit and takes it to useless cop. He's slightly more concerned, but the chief couldn't give a shit and the case goes nowhere. Meanwhile, a shrink finds that Laurie is not a danger to herself or anyone around her. Awesome!

Laurie is now staring at a slide -- an item that figures prominently in many of her childhood flashbacks. OMG, children! Ew! Laurie is so pissed off that some rugrats interuppted her obsessing that she places an ad for an "experienced babysitter" and someone falls for it. Even though Laurie wears gloves while taking care of her children, the mom seems to like her -- until she fires her because her niece is coming to live with them.

Wrong movie, mom. Laurie spends the rest of the night sorting bullets on her bed and poisoning juice boxes and rice krispie treats with iodine. Her house must be awesome at Halloween.















After a very Tylenol killer meets Martha Stewart evening, Laurie calls up babysitting mom and asks to take the kids on one more outing before the niece arrives and takes over her duties. The next morning, she calmly drops off the poisoned juice boxes on the doorsteps of people listed on her hate list (sister-in-law, shrink, etc) and then picks up babysitter mom's two kids. She hands them the poison rice krispie treats, but iodine and marshmallow is apparently not a tasty combo and they spit it out.

Laurie drops by her niece and nephew's school, pulls a gun from the trunk, goes inside and says there's been an accident with their mom. The principal says he has to call the kids' father before she can take them. She asks where the bathroom is and tries to make a run for it, but is distracted by a classroom with a number 7 on the door. Oh shit ...

Laurie wanders into the classroom and the teacher assumes that this dissheveled woman in gardening gloves and sweats is there from the university to observe, and asks her to sit down.
















Unfortunately, the kids in the class are giving her flashbacks again, and she pulls out a gun. OK seriously, if she doesn't go to jail this time, WTF? The flashbacks continue, and it seems that little Laurie has had thoughts about killing kids since she was just a tot. Charming.

Um, whoops. Turns out that she actually pulled the trigger during one of those flashbacks and there are now some dead kids on the floor. Seriously.
















She makes a run for and succeeds this time, running into a nearby home. A kid who looks like Wil Wheaton (but is actually the kid who played Andy in Child's Play 3) and his mother are in the kitchen. Wil Wheaton boy (WWB) tries to play negotiator and convinces Laurie to let his mom go. He asks Laurie if there's someone she wants to call. She opts to call her mom, but mom doesn't give a shit. WWB takes the phone and tries to get mom to come over there, but she's not having any of that. Laurie disconnects the phone and gives WWB crazy eyes.

OMG, don't kill him. He has such perfect 90's hair!
















Damn. "I want to help you" is apparently the wrong thing to say to a psycho with a gun because Laurie blows him away. BITCH! $10 says he survives, though.

Laurie's mom finally got her shit together and came to the house, but she tells the cops outside that she thinks it's better if Laurie doesn't come out of this alive. Super.

Dad tries to talk Laurie out of the house on a megaphone while SWAT infiltrates. Too late; Laurie turned the gun on herself in the bedroom of WWB's sister - but not before drawing a few more weird lipstick faces on the mirror. That room is going to have some fucked up karma.

Told you -- WWB surives, but one of the kids at the school died, according to updates flashed on the screen. They also passed some law in Illinois that made it illegal for someone as crazy as Laurie to get a gun, but didn't the gun store owner ask her if she was nuts and she said no? Who am I to overanalyze a Lifetime movie, though? As far as entertaining and fucked up thrill rides go, this one certainly delivered. Bravo Valerie!

-Callie Cain
 
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