by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2019 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
Last night I watched a couple of movies on Lifetime that
were at least somewhat better than average: In Bed with a Killer and Trapped Model. Given Lifetime’s predilections you could practically
write these yourself — particularly the former, since just three weeks ago
Lifetime premiered a movie called I Almost Married a Serial Killer which not only had a similar title to In
Bed with a Killer but a similar plot line
as well — except that In Bed with a Killer had a “surprise” plot twist, and even that, given the conventions of
recent Lifetime movies, wasn’t much of a surprise at all. Originally called A
Deadly Romance until someone at Lifetime
decided it needed a more sensational title to woo jaded viewers, In
Bed with a Killer deals with heroine Lena
(Jennifer Taylor) and her daughter Ashley (Rachel Rosenstein), who as the movie
opens have just moved to a small town — the usual generic Anywhere, America in
which a lot of Lifetime movies have been set (the movie was made in Guthrie,
Oklahoma, so at least this time Anywhere, America is not being “played” by Anywhere, Canada) — two years
after the death of Ashley’s father. The two women haven’t recovered from this
and Lana hasn’t dated or even taken an interest in any other man since her
husband’s death. She’s in town to open a cake shop, and to promote her new
business she passes out cupcakes on the street, mostly to other small
businesspeople — including Michael (the gorgeous Ryan Patrick Shanahan, who
last appeared on Lifetime in the title role of something called Sinister
Minister), who runs the local hardware
store and settled there after giving up a career as a prizefighter following a
bout in which he accidentally killed his opponent.
Michael’s former girlfriend
mysteriously disappeared one night; he presumes she simply ran off and left
him, but the prologue scene, in which a young woman was knifed to death by a
hooded figure in the dark, suggests that Michael is the titular killer and he’s
knocking off the town’s women. One sees the killer at work at least twice more
and wonders how nobody seems to notice the escalating body count — including
the town police, who are so lazy and inept they make Andy Griffith and Don
Knotts look like a S.W.A.T. team by comparison. Midway through the movie
writers Colin Edward Lawrence (who also directed), Richard Switzer and Erin
Murphy West start letting slip hints that the real killer may not be Michael
but may be a woman, Jenny (Jade Harlow), whose teenage son Charlie (the
nice-looking if somewhat dorky Joseph Mann) is dating Ashley (which, for some
reason the writers don’t explain, raises Lana’s ire — she continually tries to
break them up and orders Ashley home whenever she catches her trying to visit
Charlie). In the end it turns out that Jenny decided for some reason that she
and Michael were destined to be together, and to that end she knocked off
anyone who stood in their way, including her own husband and all Mike’s other
girlfriends as well as Heather (Rachel Amanda Bryant), who had been
investigating the case on her own and was convinced Michael was a serial killer
— only Jenny knocked her off (the usual knife attack from a hooded figure
dressed in sweat clothes that made it impossible, especially in the noir-ish half-light with which Lawrence and his
cinematographer, Ben Demarce, shot the killings, to tell the killer’s gender)
and therefore put Heather in the role (usually played by African-Americans,
though here she’s white) of the heroine’s best friend who stumbles onto the
villain’s plot but gets offed before she can reveal it.
In Bed with a
Killer was pretty much to the Lifetime
formula, but Lawrence’s neo-noir
direction (and in particular his following Alfred Hitchcock’s advice to shoot
murders like love scenes and love scenes like murders) make this one special.
So does the quite beautiful finish Lawrence and his co-writers came up with:
the cops, finally roused from their torpor, come on Lana and Jenny in a
full-fledged confrontation — thanks to Michael, who’s best buds with the local
sheriff and finally got him to
take the situation seriously. The police arrive and hear Lana and Jenny each
accusing the other of trying to murder her —but which woman are they supposed
to believe? Lana hits on the idea of grabbing Michael and giving him a deep,
passionate kiss — and sure enough that “hooks” Jenny’s jealousy; in a rage she
spits out a confession and the police arrest her and take Charlie (who’s going
to have one hell of a psychological breakdown over the revelation that his mom
murdered not only his dad but quite a few other people as well) into protective
custody until the courts can determine what to do with him. There’s a tag scene
set “Four Months Later,” as the title tells us, in which Charlie and Ashley are
shooting hoops together in her mom’s backyard (apparently the traumatic events
have had at least one good effect on Charlie: they’ve remarkably improved his
skills as a basketball player) and Lana and Michael appear headed for a
permanent commitment. In Bed with a Killer is a good Lifetime movie that delivers on the formula even if it
doesn’t really transcend it — and Ryan Patrick Shanahan is fun to look at, especially in one scene in which
he’s taking a one-on-one yoga class and he’s dressed in only a T-shirt and
nicely revealing grey shorts!
