Don't Wake Mommy

Last night's fare was two Lifetime movies, one called "Don't Wake Mommy" which had had its "world premiere" the night before, and another called "Bad Sister" which was having its "world premiere" last night. "Don't Wake Mommy" was written and directed by one Chris Sivertson but followed the Christine Conradt formula so closely he (or she?) might as well have called it "The Perfect New Mom." The gimmick is that Donna (Reagan Pasternak) and her husband, firefighter Brad (the genuinely hot Dean Geyer — at least Sivertson did not follow the usual Lifetime convention of casting good-looking men only as villains!), are about to have a baby girl, Ava. Meanwhile, Beth (Sara Rue, whose IMDb.com head shot shows her in a nurse's uniform even though her character, though established as a nurse, isn't shown working as one) is introduced threatening the married (to someone else) doctor who fathered her child-to-be, a boy named Robert. She, the doctor and his wife have a confrontation in which Beth takes out a large kitchen knife and threatens to kill either the other two or herself, but she eventually slinks away in frustration and logs on to a Web site for new mothers, where she and Donna meet. The two women ultimately meet face-to-face and become friends, and use each other as baby sitters as needed. Only, since Sivertson's script has already established that Beth is crazy, we're bracing ourselves for the eventual (and inevitable) scenes in which Beth starts manifesting her craziness around Donna and gets in the way of Donna, Brad and their kid. "Don't Wake Mommy" — a rather confusing title — is Lifetime at its most routine, a by-the-numbers psycho thriller in which Sara Rue doesn't even achieve the appealingly chilly psychopathology of her predecessors in this sort of role (she makes Ashley Dulaney's performance as the analogous character in "The House Sitter" look better by comparison than I thought Dulaney was when I watched that film) and the denouement is all too predictable — indeed, throughout this movie we're anticipating each turn of the plot at least two commercial breaks ahead, evoking memories of Dwight Macdonald's praise of the 1941 version of "The Maltese Falcon" for keeping us a beat or two behind the director (the young John Huston, making his first film) instead of always ahead of him!

In the opening minutes, we meet overly perky brunette Sara Rue (as Beth). Obviously pregnant, the ex-nurse visits an older couple. The man wants to stay with his wife, leaving Ms. Rue to struggle as a single mother. Rue furiously grabs a kitchen knife and goes "Lifetime TV movie" psycho. We don't know if she's going to slash her wrists, kill the prospective father, or plunge the knife into her own fetus. You'll have to see for yourself. The action quickly switches to wrung-out blonde Ashley Bell (as Molly). A new mother, Ms. Bell may be suffering from postpartum depression. After conferring with her hunky Los Angeles fireman husband Dean Geyer (as Brad), Bell decides to join an Internet support group for new mothers...

Yep, Bell hooks up with perky mama Rue from the opening scene...

"Don't Wake Mommy" is a routine entry in the psycho mother genre. Many scenes work, but there are major problems as characters move too quickly in the editing room. It gets difficult in the second half. At times, it seems like parts of the story are missing. Once, after a commercial break insert, a fairly large chunk of story appears to be missing. Characters move around illogically. One of the final scenes is mind-boggling as it suggests a character has completed an impossible crawl. Alex Essoe (as Susan Baxter) does well in the predictable best friend role and Mads Heldtberg's music is a strength. Alas, writer-director Chris Sivertson may not have had enough time or support to turn in a more acceptable product.

*** Don't Wake Mommy (2015/11/09) Chris Sivertson ~ Ashley Bell, Sara Rue, Dean Geyer, Alex Essoe

Well, I had the opportunity to sit down and watch the 2015 thriller "Don't Wake Mommy" (aka "Dark Intentions") here in 2021. And since it was a movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I did sit down to watch it.

And I have to admit that the fact that the movie had Sara Rue, Ashley Bell, Denise Crosby and Harry Van Gorkum on the cast list definitely helped to win me over. Just a shame though, that Denise Crosby and Harry Van Gorkum had so very little on-screen time in the movie.

It was nice to see Sara Rue in a movie such as "Don't Wake Mommy", and she really performed quite well in the movie, with her portrayal as Beth - a deranged woman. She really made the movie well-worth sitting through, together with the performance of Ashley Bell.

Sure, the storyline told in "Don't Wake Mommy" was as predictable as they come, but there still was something about it that just worked. It was perhaps a combination of an adequate storyline, albeit generic and predictable one, mixed with some interesting characters and some good acting performances.

While "Don't Wake Mommy" was watchable, writer and director Chris Sivertson hardly managed to deliver a movie that can sustain more than just a single viewing. Yeah, there just isn't enough contents to the storyline to make it a movie you'd watch more than once.

I did, however, actually enjoy this movie and it turned out better than I had anticipated it would. Hence, I am rating "Don't Wake Mommy" a six out of ten stars.

Hey lifetime hire someone with lady parts to write your scripts. a monkey could have written a more insightful story about a barnacle. Besides be incredibly slow, the underlying misogyny oozing from every pore of this film was distressing. How could a channel meant for women make a film that was offensively ignorant of what being a mother, wife, woman, human, living creature be? I have never seen anything so insanely 2-dimensional and lacking in insight or even entertainment value. I felt very badly for the actresses who had to try to give life to this absolutely inane script. I hope lifetime learns a lesson from this - the lesson is simple. Women are people too.

I like many lifetime movies. This was on par with most.

ABOUT MY REVIEWS:

I do not include a synopsis of the film/show -- you can get that anywhere and that does not constitute a meaningful review -- but rather my thoughts and feelings on the film that hopefully will be informative to you in deciding whether to invest 90-180 minutes of your life on it.

My scale: 1-5 decreasing degrees of "terrible", with 5 being "mediocre" 6- OK. Generally held my interest OR had reasonable cast and/or cinematography, might watch it again 7 - Good. My default rating for a movie I liked enough to watch again, but didn't rise to the upper echelons 8- Very good. Would watch again and recommend to others 9- Outstanding. Would watch over and over; top 10% of my ratings 10 - A classic. (Less than 2% receive this rating). For Lifetime Movies for Chicks (LMFC), drop the above scale by 3 notches. A 6 is excellent and 7 almost unattainable.