Shameful Secrets

Abusive, black-hearted husband is the bad guy, and the loving mother is wronged by the unfeeling court system. However, AMAZING performance by Justin Isfeld as Jason, the son. Truly a wonderful performance for a child actor so young.

I'm trying to limit my intake of Lifetime movies, if not stop watching them altogether. I haven't been counting, but I've seen over 5 now. Out of all of them, I only found a couple that I enjoyed. Most of them are trash. Ridiculous plotlines and laughable acting, even when the film revolved around a serious topic. I guess for people who don't get out much, they teach "lessons." But as for me, I often feel like they're a waste of my time. However, there were some films that I just couldn't finish watching, no matter how much I tried. Not because they were crappy, but more or less disturbing. It's not very often that a movie makes me mad... Like to the point of my heart racing. Anything not real that makes me feel like that, I don't consider to be entertaining. Tim Matheson gave such a believable performance as the evil, wife-beating husband, Daniel, of Joanna Kerns (Maryanne), that I wanted to jump through the screen and try to fight him, since she was too scared to do it. He beats her relentlessly in front of their 2 kids, even hitting her when she was holding one of them. And that's when I couldn't take it anymore, so I stopped watching. I hate to see kids suffering. I can watch stuff that contains all sorts of violence, and not be bothered, but I have a low tolerance for watching kids get harmed. Some people just allow too much dysfunction in their house. At what point was she going to leave him? If he didn't have a problem terrifying his own children, he had been abusive for years. That didn't start happening out of nowhere. I know movies can ignite all kinds of emotions within us, and that's not something we should run away from, because we're human. Nonetheless, I personally don't like to get stressed out when I watch a film. I plan on never revisiting this again.

This could have been a great movie if I didn't have to mute it and turn the captions on because the piano was just way too much! More than half of the movie had the same piano tune in the background and it did not go with what was going on in the movie whatsoever. I started to wonder if the movie was glitched until I read another review that mentioned the same thing.

It definitely is a typical lifetime movie and hard to really connect with the characters since they really didn't go into detail with them much at all. The boy was wonderful and probably the one that was easiest to sympathize with.

Not sure why the hate. Yikes. Stumbled upon this on Tubi since they have the old classic lifetime movies. Lifetime movies in the 80s and 90s were the best ones, and this one was no exception. Exceptional acting from Joanna kerns and the child who played her son Jason. People can say that this is another "typical lifetime movie" but to me, thats ok. This story should be told over and over until people realize what women go through. Tim Matheson always plays the bad guy, being type-cast in almost everything, so he did well here. It was a great story of abuse running in families from generation to generation and the struggle women face trying to leave, since most people think its so easy. A lot of new laws have been enacted in the last couple decades but battered women and children were through the roof during the time of this movie. If you like typical lifetime movies, you'll like this one as well.

I suspect that the people who dislike the film may struggle with emotional issues. This film was moving, Joanne and Matthew were extremely convincing, and the young boy who played the son has to be one of the best child actors I've ever seen. The battered woman and child story is one that needs to be told over and over again so that people can understand how traumatic and horrific abuse is. This story was extremely effective, and a lifetime original.. lifetime used to make movies like this, and I wish they would move back to these types of stories, gripping, moving, and validating. This was a heart-wrenching, beautiful movie.