Revenge for My Mother (2022 TV Movie) User Reviews

Acting not bad but movie too contrived overall

[deedrala · 4/10 · 25 September 2022]

Revenge for My Mother

Title should be "Revenge for My Parents" since the female lead/LGG (Lifetime Good Girl) was indirectly responsible for the LBG's (Lifetime Bad Girl) father's death also, when the shock of seeing his wife's killer online caused the heart attack that led to the stent surgery that he did not survive.

Anyway, the entire movie is based on a huge contrivance that's not likely to happen in real life: LBG getting out of jail and finding a job listing for the business owned by the exact same woman who accidentally killed her mother twenty years ago.

Not to mention how it was completely glossed over with no mention of how she was instantly hired with not even a background check done by LGG, especially because of LBG's valid concern that it wouldn't be easy finding a job right after getting out of jail.

So thanks to those two glaring plotholes, we have yet another psycho-vengeance-scheme focused on the undeserving sane, normal, decent victim - with a baby, no less. In other words, more of same-old same-old re: over-the-top LMN fictional flicks. But the acting all around wasn't bad and it gets an extra point for the stiletto high heels bit because it was clever and original, unlike the other usual rehashed tropes of framing the husband/boyfriend and ruining the career/business of the unsuspecting victim, etc.

I also liked the log wrapped in the blanket as a concealed weapon until I realized that that, too, was a contrivance that wouldn't happen in real life since the baby would most likely be bawling at the top of her lungs after her blanket was taken off her and her mom left her alone in the stroller. Actually, the baby rarely ever cried throughout the movie, unless it was for convenience to the plot, like when the crying distracted the villain from her forced-suicide murder of the victim, giving the vic the upper hand which, of course, saved her life.

So because of the few yet fairly major plotholes/contrivances - no matter the well-done direction and acting - it only rates as fair..

Grade C - 4 out of 10.

Starts good, gets crazy weird

[steenie-65391 · 6/10 · 13 March 2023]

This movie actually started out really good. The father and the daughter characters were initially believable. A lot of people are stating the father was a bully. Not true. Just giving her tough love telling her to get a job because she just got out of prison after 18 months. Not a bully at all. Just an actual caring parent that wants to make sure their kid gets off their a$$ and make something of themselves.

As the movie progresses, the plot gets a bit ridiculous, the main character goes psycho and the acting from the other set is not great. I really felt for the lead girl in the beginning but that soon dissipates. The mother character has a baby and she's got to be at least 40 years old in the movie. The boyfriend is a little bit of a joke in my opinion. Not a bad watch but not the best.

Not the best acting

[inucopets · 6/10 · 10 August 2023]

These thrillers are usually so fun. And this one started out very good. I was excited to see the relationships grow. But the acting wasn't very good. And unfortunately there were too many glaring potholes to get into it. I enjoy thrillers that have parent relationships, so this one seemed right up my alley. The daughter mother relationship can be so important in movies and sometimes this movie gets it right. They had a chance to explore family dynamics, but it fell on bad filmmaking. The ex convict was hard to believe. I appreciate them telling this story though. I like these twists and drama connections, so was happy to watch.

TERRIBLE ACTING

[anushkalovell · 2/10 · 4 October 2022]

I am a fan of lifetime movies but some of them have such bad acting, and this movie is one of them. When they do scenes with babies involved, they must make it look real. You can tell they are holding a doll from they way the carry it and move it about. Some lifetime movies have a great story and great acting but some are just so mediocre. It is hard to imagine in this day and age. The story is nothing unusual. I must say I was quite disappointed. It could be a much better movie if it was produced and directed better. Even the father having his heart attack was strange and very badly potrayed. The woman playing the assistant is a lousy actress and hardly cuts the profile of an ex convict.

A Morality Tale on Victimhood

[lavatch · 7/10 · 28 September 2022]

The diabolical mind of young Brooklyn Hart (aka, Elizabeth "Lisa" Ann Wolf) seems to have no bounds. When her abusive father, Gavin Wolf, is on his deathbed, he reveals the name of the driver who accidentally killed Brooklyn's mom. Despite her just having completed eighteen months in prison for assaulting her high school math teacher, Brooklyn moves into action for revenge on Audrey Bates. But in the process, she only reveals how much she relishes in her victimhood.

Brooklyn may deserve acknowledgment for her imaginative schemes to ruin the life of Audrey. Brooklyn also frames Audrey's partner, Matt Conroy, who spends most of the film in a holding cell in jail on false charges of assaulting Brooklyn. The death of the feisty Jane Miller, Audrey's best friend, was also a horrific act, as she is bludgeoned to death with the tin holding Brooklyn's father's ashes. Due especially to the times she endangers the well-being of Audrey's baby Zoe, it is difficult to have an ounce of sympathy for Brooklyn.

A shortcoming of the film was in the difficulty of believing that the astute Audrey would not have caught on earlier to Brooklyn's game. For her entire adult life, Audrey has lived with the guilt of taking the life of Brooklyn's mom. The mother was suffering from postpartum depression on the night she got "hammered" and stepped in front of the motor vehicle driven by Audrey. Having performed community service (picking up trash) for "involuntary manslaughter," Audrey is now working with mothers with newborn babies to help them through the transition in her Stroller Moms' meetings in the park. Audrey even kept the court file that listed the name of the woman she accidentally killed, as well as the name of the child. Yet somehow, she could not pick up on any of Brooklyn's hints.

Audrey's baby Zoe is tossed around like a football in the course of the film. The most outrageous moment on the part of the filmmakers was a recycling of the iconic scene of the runaway baby stroller on the steps of Odessa in Eisenstein's classic film "Potemkin." Overall, there was excellent pacing, dramatic tension, and first-rate performances in this reflection on the pitfalls of playing the victim card.

A Waste of 2 hrs

[rlf-63903 · 1/10 · 13 May 2023]

Absolutely no one could be this stupid. A successful business owner hires an assistant without running a bakground check ... gives her a house key ... trusts the stranger more than her own husband ... YIKES! The capper is the chase scene where the vicious, diabolical murderess chases a running mom who is pushing a stroller with the baby in the stroller! Also, the police officer is a legitimate comic. He goes off on a tangent on the disarray in his car's trunk while an hysterical woman waits to hear his explanation of her baby's status. Later he tears the baby from mom and says, "You've got to calm down!". No one involved in this film should ever work again.

Stupid!

[haroot_azarian · 22 May 2023]

One reviewer highlighted a number of significant flaws (some of which were just stupid). So here we have a girl (Brooklyn) who's done 18 months for assault just released from prison. All she has is high school education which she did not finish obviously because of incarceration. But it turns out she is a master at planning and scheming revenge for a simple lie told to her by her dying father about how her mom died.

As stated in another review. The protagonist i.e. Audrey hires Brooklyn without doing proper background checks, and even if we should assume the background checks were done off-screen, then the screenwriter and director made a huge mistake in not having it done on camera. Audrey's trust in Brooklyn grows to the extent that she lets her run (ruin in reality) her business. And believing her over her boyfriend of many years is also a typical ridiculous Lifetime regular thing in all their movies. Also the boyfriend's reasons for not marrying Audrey (who had been together for ten years), was totally stupid and sounded like he was just keeping his options open just in case. Anyway this was the start of the snowball rolling of ruining Audrey's life and career.

Janet, Audrey's best friend and business partner was a bit of a strange character. She immediately believed the story about Matt attacking Brooklyn and the way she continued recording the confrontation scene in the park even after Audrey told her to stop filming. She was a waste of time character and she brought on her own death.

Then there is the stupid cop who should have been suspended without pay pending investigation into his treatment of Audrey, when she kept asking where her daughter was several times, but he continued in a cold and cruel way to describe step by step what had supposedly unfolded, which took several minutes, something that would drive any concerned mother crazy.

This was another Lifetime movie where I did not like any of the characters and was not rooting for any one of them. Watch it at your own peril.

Being a high profile business owner and a new mom, yet hiring someone w/o a background check....

[CranberriAppl · 11 March 2023]

Tells you everything you need to know about this movie. What could go wrong?

Nothing here is new. While I'm not onboard with lying to your child, the set up of the father (on what he didn't know was his deathbed) telling Brooklyn that not only did her mom not die of illness, but she was hit by a car and killed...then he tells her the driver's name! The whole scene was awkward. It was like the dad couldn't anticipate how B would react and HIS reaction seemed way too muted for what he was revealing. Later in the movie, we found out what Audrey's "punishment" was and all I could think was, "THIS is how the dad feels about it now?" The dad gave off zero resentment, zero bitterness, and zero sense of injustice. His SPOILER SPOILER death was also quite jarring given that I looked down to type something and in the next thing I knew he was dead.

Nothing here is unpredictable. I'm tired of false accusations. It would have been more believable had she drugged Matt (?) and set up an affair as opposed to an assault. Could have easily gotten him out of the movie with that instead of putting him in jail. In fact, staging something between the bff and him (a la Hand That Rocks the Cradle) could have created more tension.

Some other too obvious things: her seeing a folder marked PASSWORDS and the husband/boyfriend leaving the key on display....where a stranger he had no idea was comign to his house could see. Brooklyn's weird outburst at her lunch INTERVIEW, yet she got hired anyway. I thought it was a bit much how Audrey didn't even get both sides of the story of what (didn't) happen btwn Matt and Brooklyn. I mean, I recognize what Hollywood is currently, but given that we KNOW he didn't do anything, the movie could have at least attempted to show that it was he said/she said. Especially since BROOKLYN came on to him and HE rebuffed her advances.

I've never heard of this movie and I watched a bunch of Lifetime/LMN stuff in 2022. There's no reason to feel sorry for Brooklyn. At all, and there are better revenge movies. Audrey has no reason to put so much trust in her. Even accepting how these movies go, I don't sympathize with killers. I could ALMOST believe trying to ruin her life with psychological games or something, but killing and falsely accusing and endangering kids....nah.

Another annoying thing, why wouldn't the police officer lead with "THE BABY IS FINE?!" Why go through the story of the incident first? It was so bizarre.

The acting is on par for filler Lifetime movies. I guess the only sympathetic characters are Matt and the best friend (tired of bffs dying tbh) . I FF to the climax and everything from there is exactly as expected. It took Audrey way too long to realize what was going on and there needs to be an update to this particular movie template. In 2022/2023, it's boring. Lifetime has had some decent movies in the last year, so it's hard to give the bad ones a pass. The network has more believable and entertaining revenge storylines.