The Danger of Positive Thinking

How did they so badly miscast this movie? If you can get past the subpar acting from Ashley Rickards (Mallory), and the predictable storyline, you'll end up unable to get past the bad casting. Parker Mack (Mark) and Ashley are obviously in their 20's even though it's made clear in the movie that Mark is 17 (turning 18). This fact makes some of the conflict in the film (underage drinking, sexual hookups and moving out) laughable as these legal aged actors fail to convince anyone that Mom can still ground them from their video games and hangouts.

Ashley is awesome in everything she does, and while she looked young enough to play an 18 year-old, everyone kind of already knows she was about 25 when this was filmed. Then we have the woman who played the mom and she was 35 per the actress's actual age upon filming, so what, she had this boy at 16 or 17 and then somehow finished high school and college and became a famous author? Ashley Rickards is only 9 or 10 years younger than Nicky Whelan. So they looked like a very odd group in this movie. All the actors were pretty unknown - except Rickards - which leads me to believe that they cast it then decided to try and get an actual star for this. The acting was not horrible, it's the way it was shot and produced that makes it Lifetime Movie Nightmare. It's also after all is said and done after a showdown...with everyone giggling? I don't want to give any spoilers but it's the worst writing ever because it's absurdly predictable - unless you're 12. I really hope they paid Rickards a lot to put herself into this movie because this is the kind of stuff that ruins careers. She's way better than this.

Why do they cast. 26 year old as a teenager? Only the beginning of a long list of bad.

The casting in this movie is awful, the "teen" stalker looks older then the mom in this movie. The acting is wooden and the casting is comical.

Boy, Netflix was really scraping the bottom of the barrel when they acquired this independently made movie. Where does it go wrong? Well, to put it bluntly, in every way you can think of. For starters, it makes the remarkable accomplishment of managing to badly miscast every key character, not just with teenage characters that are obviously played by actors who are in their late 20s (or possibly older.) But even if the movie had a cast made up of more convincing and capable actors, those actors wouldn't be able to do anything with a remarkably dumb story (with even more moronic characters) that moves slower than the pace of a snail. The really low production values (which for a time had me convinced this was a Canadian production) just add to the challenge of trying to sit through the entire movie. In the end, this is a thriller without any thrills at all.