Cidade Pequena, Grandes Mentiras

Rhonda Dent stars as a mother who searches for her daughter, who goes missing after a car crash. Things get even more complicated as she discovers that many people died in mysterious circumstances following the car accident. She soon discovers a shocking possibility and needs to act quickly to get her daughter back.

This is a well-made thriller that benefits from some fine acting, especially by Rhonda Dent, who plays the mother role and is convincingly distressed and desperate to get her daughter back. It's sort of predictable halfway through in regards to who has abducted her daughter, though the why and wherefores isn't clear. There's a sense of foreboding and menace, thanks to the character and atmosphere.

OK, we don't expect afternoon movies to be good and this one didn't disappoint.

Stopping at a dilapidated petrol station in the middle of nowhere is never a good idea in this type of film, particularly when it's staffed by creepy guys straight from Zombie Central Casting.

Have the almost identical mother & daughter (apparently the actors are only a few years apart in age) not watched the right films?

The mother's behaviour over her daughter's unexplained disappearance is strange: waking up in hospital, "Where's my daughter?" Is not the first but the last question she asks before roaming empty corridors opening random doors.

(Stranger still that she's not asked for her credit card or health insurance to settle the bill before wandering off)

Local sheriff instantly dismisses everything she says, totally uninterested in her story.

In fairness, as the townsfolk all seem to be barking mad, maybe a stranger in town reporting a mysterious vanishing daughter is just one more item to be crossed off his to-do list.

Don't waste your time on this one.

A young couple stops at a gas station and the woman gets taken. Rachel Baker (Rhonda Dent) and her daughter Hannah are driving through the same town. A car runs them down and crashes into them. Rachel wakes up in a hospital outside of town. Hannah is nowhere to be found. Rachel goes back to search for her. The Sheriff is less than helpful.

The town needs to look scarier. The TV production lets the movie down. The town should probably be smaller and poorer. At some point, she would go to the FBI or anybody from the outside. At least, she should call the number for the other missing girl. Right from the start, the movie is not making sense. Rachel would never be allowed to live after the car crash. This is weak even for Lifetime.

This is one of many many Lifetime type "thrillers" wherein a child or daughter goes missing in a small tight knit town - typically after some sort of accident. The mother or relative immediately go searching.

As with all these movies, the sheriff is either involved or not involved, and you typically don't find out til the end. Nonetheless, the pleadings of the mother are almost immediately dismissed. The mother then posts a missing persons flyer on the sheriff bulletin board where oh my gosh there are tons of other photos of missing children there too. Surprisingly, that was not the case here.

Notwithstanding, the mother still falls into the same trappings of all the movies of this genre. She starts blabbing all her leads to anyone who will listen, breaks into houses looking for clues, and confronts people at their place of business accusing them of horrid crimes.

The movie does an admirable job of keeping you guessing "what's actually going on" and, to be fair, the "big secret" is not reasonably guessable. That said, it's a little perplexing that the villainous people allow her to prance around town stirring up suspicions with impunity - while on the other hand they were quick to kill people's at the drop of a hat if they display the least bit of intelligence or suspicion.

By the way, wouldn't you think an 18-19 year old fit-looking girl could outrun a 50 year old grumpy stumpy beer-bellied man on level terrain? I guess not.

Anyways, it was refreshing to see the baddie husband get a knife shoved into his neck and otherwise beat down rather than get shot by the sheriff coming out of nowhere at the last minute as is typical in these movies.

Formula plot with unrealistic scenarios. Average to below average acting with no likeable characters. The mother (Rhonda Dent) is actually only 3yrs older than her supposed 18yr old daughter (Kristina Paras) and it showed.

Totally unrealistic scenes such as the mother being allowed to wander all over an active murder scene stepping around the forensics team and handling everything in sight as she wanted to call by and feed the victim's cat!

For someone who was so bonded and obsessed with her daughter, it took her an unnaturally long time to enquire after her daughter's welfare when she (the mother) finally gained consciousness in hospital.

Laughable ending.

Can't understand the high ratings.