A Wife's Nightmare (2014) Reviews

• The nightmare is in watching this in the first place

  metalrage6662017-05-04

  Oh my God what a lame and poorly executed piece of trash this is. Believe me when I tell you that this review will concisely and accurately detail the mess that this show is and if you still decide to watch it, then I accept no responsibility for your inevitable brain aneurysm. A mother played by Flash Dance herself, Jennifer Beals, suffers a mental breakdown and while she recuperates in hospital, her husband starts a tawdry affair with a 19 year old town bike who works at a local record store. Clearly this guy is tired of his wife so he and this tramp concoct this ridiculous story that she is his long lost daughter who unexpectedly turns up at the house just after the wife is discharged from care and is trying to pick up the pieces of her life. Of course there's the usual pretence of this girl could be but she may not be so let's get a DNA test and make it all look legit. Meanwhile as they await the results of this test, the husband gets a bit too touchy-feely for the wife's liking, especially seeing as this girl is supposed to be his daughter, but he's easily able to dismiss her fears as nothing more than a remnant of her recent mental instability under the guise of either, 'why would he do this to a 19 year old' or 'why would he get inappropriate with what could potentially be his daughter'. Naturally the wife reluctantly buys it and this jerk gets a reprieve. Not long after the wife wakes up in the night to find the daughter skulking around the house. She notices that her computer is on and finds that some important work file has been tampered with. She doesn't learn her lesson for some reason and her computer is accessed a 2nd time and an entire presentation has been erased. This upsets the overseas client who no doubt takes his business elsewhere, the wife is fired as she's considered to be taking on too much too soon and I can't help but think why anybody wouldn't automatically have some back-up on a flash drive secured at her office, but it's a Lifestyle program so that alone adds to this improbable "nightmare". The wife confronts the daughter twice about the computer tampering, the daughter queues the water works both times, the father naturally backs her up, seeing as he's sleeping with her and the wife is thinking that's she's descending into madness again. To make matters worse, the fake DNA results are in so fake daughter is further ensconced into her adoptive family and their journey towards the dark side is almost complete. However the whole plan unravels when the son comes home and walks in on father and fake daughter screwing; mother comes home soon after where son spills the beans, father tries his useless best to blame everybody else for his infidelity and failed music career so fake daughter starts whimpering and admits to the shady doings that even blind Freddy can now clearly see. Wife kicks husband and his whore out of the house, son reunites with his mother and they all live happily ever after. In my opinion the whole story is one huge plot hole from start to finish. How they thought this scam was ever going to work is a mystery. What was the father going to do with his son? If his goal was to get rid of the wife and replace her with a younger sluttier model, then how was he going to explain sleeping with her when he's already introduced her to everybody they knew as his daughter? Were they planning on keeping the relationship a secret for the rest of their lives? That's the only way this could ever work as well as relying on his son or anyone with a brain not using deductive reasoning, eventually figuring it out and going to the authorities. The long lost daughter story is just dumb. It'd work a lot better if this girl were ANYTHING else other than a blood relative. So as I've said earlier, this is the whole story and if you still decide to watch after you've been carefully forewarned then you deserve the vegetative state you'll end up in.

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• Lifetime, what did I expect

  blanche-22014-12-27

  It's very sad to see beautiful, talented Jennifer Beals in a film like this, but such is the price of turning 50 in Hollywood. I give her credit -- she works much more than many other women her age. I think she could have afforded to skip this one. Beals stars as Liz, a woman who has had a mental breakdown and recently returned to her family. She is the breadwinner; her husband Gabe is an out-of-work musician trying to put an album together. One day a young woman shows up, says her name is Caitlin and that she's Gabe's daughter. Her mother is deceased, and her will directed her daughter to him. Since Caitlin is living out of her car, the family moves her in, and before long, she is causing problems as they await the DNA results. For one thing, she kisses her brother on the lips. Strange things begin to happen to Liz's work - files disappear when she's trying to make a presentation at work, for instance. Before long, Liz feels like she's ready for the asylum again. It won't be hard to figure this one out. Thanks to Beals, it's not as bad as it could have been. One problem - for a presentation as major as the Beals character was giving, one would think she would have had those files on a jump drive in her office. Just saying. I saw it on Lifetime, which says it all.

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• It Could Have Been Good

  geekgirl1990252014-12-31

  I was very disappointed with this movie. It had the potential to be really good. Especially when we couldn't tell WHAT was going on. But of course it turned out to be clichéd by the end. Of course. I am so tired of Lifetime movies where the men turn out to be the losers in the situation. It would have been so much better if Liz had been insane and Caitlin had actually been his daughter. Liz flushed her pills in the first thirty minutes of the movie. The acting was strong from everybody though, so there are points for that. But the plot was terrible and I highly doubt that it was based on actual events.

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• Help Me Make It through the Nightmare

  wes-connors2016-04-26

  Following a nervous breakdown, attractive businesswoman Jennifer Beals (as Elizabeth "Liz" Michaels) is sent home from the psychiatric hospital. With help from some balancing medication, Ms. Beals believes she can also return to work. This is great news, because handsome musician husband Dylan Neal (as Gabe) is still looking for a best-seller, after completing two albums. The couple have one son, cute high school-aged Spencer List (as AJ). For some unexplained reason, Mr. List can't attract a pretty girl at school. After grocery shopping one day, mom and dad are accosted by beautiful blonde 19-year-old Lola Tash (as Caitlin Patterson). She claims her recently deceased mother named Mr. Neal as her father... This makes the sexy young woman Neal's daughter from a brief relationship, occurring way back. Presently living in her car, Ms. Tash is invited into the family. Now, remember Ms. Beals had a psychiatric problem. At first, she accepts Tash as a step-daughter. But Beals starts to see Tash getting very chummy with the family. One scene has Tash spilling a drink on her ample chest, with the camera moving in to show Neal patting out the wetness as it drips down her cleavage. Tash also makes slightly younger List giggle when tickling his upper thighs as they play video games. Beals witnesses these incidents and thinks they may not be so innocent. They are not explicit enough for us to know what's going on, supposedly... In reality, it's fairly obvious... This "Lifetime" TV movie never gets away from its formula, but director Vic Sarin and the cast do make it slightly better than ordinary. This is most evident in the four leading players. They remain convincing, as Mr. Sarin keeps their characterizations on track through some idiocy. Beals does not seem like she could have been crazy, but we're not shown that part of the story. List says he loves the "Underground Records" shop where Tash works, but does not recognize the gorgeous blonde who worked there is his new sister. Yet, List portrays his young teenage character very well. The opening minutes go overboard in showing Tash's emotions, but she's quite impressive. Finally, Neal definitively nails his daddy role home. ***** A Wife's Nightmare (12/27/14) Vic Sarin ~ Jennifer Beals, Lola Tash, Dylan Neal, Spencer List

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• Not great, but good

  Horst_In_Translation2015-11-18

  "A Wife's Nightmare" is a very recent entry to Emmy-winning Vic Sarin's Nightmare movie series. However, it does really not become clear until almost the very end till we now why it says "Mom's" in the title. The movie runs slightly under 90 minutes as usual for these television films and the title character is played by Jennifer Beals. Thanks to "Flashdance" she is also easily the most known cast member, certainly the only star in here. However, I felt that all the other 3 major cast members played their parts as well and especially about Lola Tash we may hear a lot in the future. She plays a kind of Lolita character who her dad is attracted to, who kisses her brother and gets other boys have a crush on her. And while I enjoyed the film overall, there are also weak aspects about it. In terms of a combination of script and acting, there are some bad moments here, such as when we see Beale's character's boss being angry at the failed presentation. Or the fight between the 2 school boys at the end. Honestly, they messed up a bit every time it went really dramatic. Possibly the worst aspect here was the soundtrack who made this Canadian movie look pretty amateurish at times. It is all quantity over quality with extremely dramatic music in fairly uninteresting sequences even. I personally would have liked another outcome if we actually got to witness it all being misunderstood by the main character, which would actually have been credible with her history of mental health problems. Instead they offered us a story-line which wasn't too convincing with an upcoming divorce coming pretty much out of nowhere. This film has some flaws no doubt about it, but for a lifetime movie it's all okay. You cannot expect something epic here, but overall I give this one a thumbs up and no denying Lola Tash is extremely stunning.

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