My Daughter's Ransom

After her daughter is taken by her ex con ex boyfriend a woman has to follow his instructions to get her back including alienating everyone in her life and getting money to pay him. It isn't believable how he can keep tabs on her every move. And it's annoying how she has to do all these things but you want to see it to the end.

Not a must watch.

So she can write help in sawdust with her foot, but the MULTIPLE times that she's wrecking her life and someone else's, she couldn't grab a pen and paper? He can't see every single move she makes, so why did it take her so long to attempt that?

Everything she's saying sounds like a bad joke, and she sounds increasingly deranged yet no one suspects that more is going on. The husband doesn't even call the cops when she threatens to kill herself. No one is asking where the daughter is while she's doing this.

I caught this movie about halfway through, but the villain Carter kept moaning about his grievances towards her that I don't feel any need to catch what I missed. I just got to the point where I had to see how it ended. This is one of those absurdly silly movies that you can't believe you're watching. The villain even called her a rideshare lol!

This lady could've really benefitted from having her auto-correct turned on for her texting. Or maybe even try texting people earlier at ANY POINT (using that not looking trick her daughter showed her) since the bad guy could only see what she pointed her hat at.

She makes almost zero effort to signal for help at any moment; no hand signs, no mouthing words, no darting her eyes, not even when she draws "H-E-L-P" in the sand does she nudge the guy next to her to look down.

And I don't know if this is a fault of the lead actress or of the direction from the writer/director but why does she not ever display any tears or anguish when being forced to say things she doesn't mean? She was far too compliant with no struggle or resistance to be believable. The director could have at the very least spritzed her face to make it look like she was having trouble with her forced words.

*edit: Having just seen the ending with her "last confession" video it doesn't appear that the actress can actually cry so... I guess that explains that.

...... MY RATING SCALE ......

• 1. Reserved for Poorly Produced/Amateur Video Junk
• 2. Utterly Terrible -- 3. Really Bad -- 4. Mediocre --
• 5. Just Okay/Average -- 6. Surprisingly Entertaining (with Shortcomings) --
• 7. Very Entertaining/Good -- 8. Incredibly Good -- 9. Exceptional/Great --
• 10. Reserved for my own Personal Favorites.

This movie made no sense. I kept watching it hoping that it would finally get to where I can say, "Wow, I underestimated this movie", but, it never did. I wouldn't watch it again as a rerun.

I file this movie under a specific category: it's implausible and dumb, but I had to see how things unfolded. To call this an action thriller would be inaccurate- it's really a comedy drama with a dash of suspense. There were times the actors' facial expressions and decision making were so laughable. And the ending scene with the family hugging a mere feet from the captor's corpse was out of place.

Nit picking a made-for-TV movie is pointless, but in the seconds that the kidnapper turns off his headset, that would have been the perfect time for this mom (played by Olivia Wilde's lookalike Scottie Thompson) to alert authorities that her daughter was taken. And sadly we never figure out how this idiot kidnapper gets sound devices placed in the main couple's house to begin with. For the course of a year no device was ever found and he was able to get in and out of the house unscathed. Talk about luck.

So despite the inconceivable story and lack of twists and turns, it was tempting to watch.