I'll Be Watching

Okay, it's Lifetime - which already tells you all you need to know. So you just want some mindless entertainment. So you watch it. Then you're sorry.

I'll Be Watching is about a young woman, Kate (Janel Parrish) being stalked by a masked man. The police detective on the case, played by Rob Estes, suspects Kate's good buddy Nick might be the stalker. Just one problem - which Kate never mentions. Nick is black, and it's obvious looking at this guy that he's white. So for the first, I don't know, 40 minutes, the detective is sure it's Nick (who, by the way, no one has seen in a while) and she just says, no, it's not Nick. Not no, it's not Nick, because the man who attacked me is white.

Then we get to the really stupid part. The stalker licks her hair, he sucks her cheek, and she never mentions it, so no one tries to get DNA which would have probably told them the identity immediately.

I'll stop there. Awful.

The first 10 minutes of this movie looked interesting, but then it spiraled out of control. I'd like to know how much they paid some of these people to give this movie raving revues. I wouldn't recommend this movie to anyone.

So here's the thing: Lifetime movies are terrible. And fun. I leave them on during my work-from-home workday as entertainment in the background, because they require low emotional and intellectual investment. They always feature a lead woman, with a support cast. Bad things happen to the woman, but she takes control of the situation and in the end, always prevails without the help of any of her supporting cast.

One thing Lifetime movies never have: Sexual violence. Despite having stalkers and murderers in every movie, the movies just don't go there. And I appreciate that. These are silly romps that are intended to pump you up, and sexual violence would take away from that. And honestly, sexual violence is often the easy, expected thing to include in this kind of script. Ninety-nine percent of tv and movies, when they want to create a dramatic plot involving a woman, just resort to sexual violence against her.

This one has sexual violence and sexual trauma to the lead character. I hate it. It's one of the few Lifetime movies that goes there. Just putting it out there, because people don't often recognize how cool and noteworthy it is that Lifetime typically avoids it.

This movie was pretty bad. So unrealistic with the cops and some of the shots were atrocious. The acting was fine but overall definitely B-C grade.

This movie started out seeming to be pretty low-end, but near the middle things began to pick up speed and the suspense and drama built. Add in the romance and it's an all-around Lifetime staple.