Mommy's Little Girl

Sadie Connell grew up under her strict, heartless grandmother Elana and they're hiding a secret. Elana's son had died ten years earlier. After three years sober with a better life, Sadie's mother Theresa Malcolms (Fiona Gubelmann) has come to take her back. She moves in with Theresa and Aaron Myers with Aaron's angry teenage son Josh.

This is a Lifetime movie. Creepy little girls can be effective in horrors. That's what this movie should aim for but it's a Lifetime movie. It doesn't know how. It's trying to be a thriller but this doesn't have thrills. It's functional and I like the final conflict. The little girl is pretty good. Nevertheless, this is not good enough.

Usual a TV movie where there is a mentally ill bad person trying to kill his enemies. Eventually these stories end with the bad person in spychiatry or in prison. The story is similar to all the films of this genre, the only thing that changes is that this time the main villain is a young girl. Movies to pass the time if there is nothing better on TV.

This is a disheartening story of a troubled young girl who is played admirably by the young actress Emma Hentschel who plays an 11 year old school girl named Sadie Connell with a very troubled mind. Young Sadie's mind plays tricks on her that she is not loved when in fact her mother Theresa Malcolms (Fiona Gublemann) and her step father Aaron Myers (James Gallanders) are deeply in love and want to join their two families together. Aaron has a teenage son of his own named Josh (Mikael Conde) who quickly identifies that his younger step sister is not simply quirky but quite troubled and he brings to his father Aaron's attention some of the strange things he has witnessed about his younger step sister Sadie.

This is not a suspenseful made for TV film, nor is the young Sadie believable as a cold-hearted and premeditated psycho killer, but once the family comes to terms that Sadie (and her parents) are in dire need of some family counselling and psychiatric help the tail end of the film becomes more realistic and the closing few scenes in the film remind us that not all families live a normal life, and yet other families struggle with mental illness and how to cope with it.

The film may not end up on your preferred personal happy ending theme, but it will leave everyone with somethings to consider and paying more attention within our own family dynamics that require family discussions on whether to seek external support(s).

I give this made for TV film a 6 out of 10 simply for the decent and somewhat realistic way that the film handled the mental illness issue.