Playdate

A boy is driven off a cliff. Emily Valentine (Marguerite Moreau) leaves work to be a stay-at-home mom for her husband Brian (Richard Ruccolo) and daughter Olive (Natalie Alyn Lind). A new family moves in next door. It's single mom Tamara Moor (Abby Brammell) with her sons Titus and Billy. Olive has playdates with Billy but he seems have a dark side. Titus lurks around and spends his time looking out his bedroom window. A man attacks Emily's family at home. Tamara claims that he's her violent ex-husband. When that man is killed later in a motel room, she claims to not know him. Olive gets hurt while playing with Billy. The family dog shows up dead on their doorstep.

This has the potential of a good horror but as a TV movie, it struggles to be more. It has no style. The dark tension comes mostly from the constant dread of a creepy child. Creepy children is a great horror trope. Otherwise, this does not have much of a punch. I like Moreau but the suburban mom character is limited. The acting is mostly fine. I don't buy the father's cavalier attitude towards his daughter getting rough-housed by a boy. It would make sense for two boys but a girl is different. That's not to say anything is wrong with Natalie Alyn Lind. She's great. In addition, there is a trick to a red herring. It needs to be revealed before revealing the truth. This red herring is somewhat anti-climatic and it loses its power. It could have been a great reveal if it's done earlier. This limited TV horror struggles for mediocrity and almost makes it.

First off, the cover is a bit misleading and may attract the wrong audience for this film while scaring away the right one. At first glance, I thought PLAYDATE would be one of them zombie horror flicks, but it's actually a Lifetime film which, though truly suspenseful and disturbing in places with some good jump scenes, has very little in the way of schlocky gore and nothing in the way of supernatural elements.

Anyway, the Valentines, a nice, patently normal L.A. family, get some new neighbors, single mom Tamara Moor and her two sons, Titus and Billy. The Valentines try to be neighborly, Tamara does the same, and young Olive Valentine finds a much-needed friend in Billy. The Moors, however, are trying to hide some very dark family secrets. . .

I wasn't expecting much from PLAYDATE, but it proved to be something of a pleasant surprise. It has the usual stilted Lifetime directions with melodramatic instrumentals constantly playing in the background. Still, it also has better acting and MUCH livelier, loaded dialogue than most made-for-TV affairs. {Wow, is Lifetime actually maturing?!} With a few nice new flourishes, the plot-line pretty much follows the formula. There aren't many really big surprises, but there are several good smaller ones. If you want to place bets on how PLAYDATE ends up, the chances are that none of you will be absolutely right on the money even if some of you come fairly close. Despite the various oversimplifications, blank spots, and unlikelihoods, suspense thriller fans who aren't too picky should enjoy and may even really love PLAYDATE.

While the credits roll, a young boy is chased to the edge of a cliff. He falls over the edge and looks dead...

Two years later, we meet Southern California brunette Marguerite Moreau (as Emilie). She quits her job to spend more time with husband Richard Ruccolo (as Brian Valentine), their young daughter Natalie Lind (as Olive) and "Hunter" the family pooch. A new family moves in next door, from Denver. They are blonde single mom Abby (as Tamara) and her two sons, Julien Lacroix and Aidan Potter (as Titus and Billy Moor). This new family sends off creepy vibes, which irk Ms. Moreau. Her little girl has a "first official crush" on young rough-playing Potter. Moreau notices her neighbors have bruises and a man caught trespassing demands the return of his son...

Of the cast, devoted mother Brammell is most engagingly mysterious. The younger children are more silly than intriguing; most parents would separate the mismatched pair before they separated themselves. Older son Lacroix uses his hair to play the moody, distant teenager. Director Andrew C. Erin keeps it moving, though. He and his crew effectively uses close-ups to have characters abruptly enter a scene, or has them slither around in the background. By the end of "Playdate" we have a sufficient idea about what has happened, but there are some details which remain too sketchy. Kraig Wenman's original story may have been trimmed. It's not incomplete, just vague.

**** Playdate (2012-04-28) Andrew C. Erin ~ Marguerite Moreau, Abby Brammell, Richard Ruccolo, Julien Lacroix

This movie had a good concept, but it felt like as if they just wanted to end it quickly. They talk about the neighbors characters background, but only a little and has left the viewer to decipher the rest. I get that some movies do that, but they could've added more depth to the movie and it would've came out a lot better. It's a good movie, but you'll finish it feeling frustrated because they didn't go into detail about the characters just some snapshots which don't even explain much. I think my rating is fair at 5/10 stars because it's not terrible, but it's not the best.

It's not that "Playdate" is a bad flick. It's just so plain vanilla horror/thriller stock stuff that it makes watching paint dry seem downright rousing. The only mildly intriguing dynamic here is that evil resides mere steps away next door in this cookie-cutter L.A. burb.

So how well ya know your neighbors there, huh?