Video Voyeur: The Susan Wilson Story

This movie was a very realistic movie.It was a Lifetime movie.Some of Lifetime's movies are not good, but this one was very good.The actors were great.Their acting was good most of the time.This movie has alot of feelings in it.Sometimes they were happy, mad, and most of all sad.Anyway, this movie is a realistic true story.

This Lifetime made for television film tells an interesting but slightly campy look at voyeurism.

Susan Wilson (Angie Harmon) moves back to her Louisiana hometown with her family. They are given close attention by neighbour Steve Glover (Jamey Sheridan) who comes across as a little too overeager and creepy.

Susan becomes concerned when he seems to be privy to private conversations with her husband, Gary (Dale Midkiff) and sneaks into the his house to discover videotapes of herself in the shower and in the bedroom.

It seems Steve has secretly installed surveillance cameras in their house and has been taping them. To her horror she finds out that the police can do little about this as this type of voyeurism was not a crime. Worse the local church group are more forgiving of Steve and critical of Susan even when it emerges that other people in the town have also been secretly videotaped by Steve.

Susan campaigns to make this type offence a crime and takes the matter to court.

The film is earnest for Lifetime film but does come across as insipid. The neighbour is just too creepy from the word go, everything is black and white when their should had been more shade in characterisation. Harmon does well in the role who at first is shunned by many in the community for bringing the allegations against Steve. However there are flaws in the film. We are told that there was no audio in the tapes, so how did Steve know what Susan was talking about in her house?

In this fact-based film, Susan and Gary Wilson and their two children Emily and Orin move into a new house in Monroe, La., across the street from the very helpful Steve Glover, a deacon in the church. Steve, who married his teenage sweetheart Nancy and knew Susan when they all lived in Mississippi, offers to help them in any way he can. He offers them the use of his pool and hot tub, even when no one is home.

The Wilsons get involved in church and community activities. Like so many girls her age, Emily hates getting used to a new place and says she has no friends. Orin also has some trouble adjusting, though he does become friends with the Glovers' sons.

Steve is just a little too helpful to the Wilsons, though he did take care of their house before they bought it. One reason he spends so much time with the Wilsons may be the fact his wife has a career (this may be why her house is always a mess). Susan, on the other hand, stays home. She runs with her friends and plays classical piano, and she is interested in improving her musical skills.

From the film's title, you know someone will be watching something they shouldn't. While Susan is taking a shower, getting in bed, and even making love, we do see blue and white images on a TV screen that look very much like what we are seeing.

At first I thought this would be just an ordinary TV-movie, no different from a hundred others like it. But as the movie progressed, Angie Harmon effectively showed us a range of different emotions. Her character had to go from wanting to hide from the world to solving her problem regardless of the embarrassment it might cause. Plus she was beautiful--she looked just like Sandra Bullock.

Jamey Sheridan also did a good job. From the very start, he seemed nice in the manner of a used-car salesman, though I won't say whether this makes his character guilty of anything. You'll just have to watch.

This movie raised a number of questions about privacy and Christian faith. What do you forgive, and how should you handle it when someone strays? And how much of our lives are we entitled to keep to ourselves?

I found this quite entertaining.

so the theme is at least followed through, and Angie Harmon does very well portraying the victim of a video voyeur. If this was fiction it would not deserve a thought, but the fact that Ms. Wilson was actually taped by her psychotic landlord is an important fact.

Dale Midkiff is passable as the concerned husband, and Jamey Sheridan is very believable as the creepy voyeur. The audience also sees how a relatively average family, renting a house in New Orleans is victimized by "elders" of the local parish.

While sometimes these movies are completely over-the-top, this one is worth watching as a cautionary tale, and the performances are pretty good.

Jamey Sheridan especially deserves mention- think of Robin Williams in "One Hour Photo", and you will get the picture; a menacing character who we may encounter many times in our life; one never knows what a person is capable of. 7/10.

This is a TV movie based on a true story. Angie Harmon and Dale Midkiff star as parents of two children who move into a new neighborhood and find that one of the neighbors is on the strange side. At first, he's a little annoying. Then he becomes really annoying. Then he becomes inappropriate, like when he lets himself into their house when his power allegedly goes out. At no time does anyone tell him to get lost or that he's crossed a few boundaries.

After that, he starts dropping hints that make him seem like he's either a mind-reader or has some inside knowledge of their home. That's when they find out that he's run a wire into their house and is videotaping them.

I think I saw this woman on Oprah, and the story is indeed shocking. It's because of this family's experience that there are now laws against this type of thing -- originally, there were none, if you can believe it.

This was an okay movie, very average, with Sheridan being friendly but slimy underneath. Angie Harmon is an attractive and sympathetic as the mother. There's just nothing really special about any of it.