What Did You Watch? 2025-08-30 (Saturday) & 2025-08-31 (Sunday)
From
Ian J. Ball@21:1/5 to
All on Mon Sep 1 12:37:43 2025
Trying to take it easy, while working in the evenings. But I have gotten through some movies over the past few days:
I'll get to "The Stepdaughter 1/2" in a second, but after watching "The Stepdaughter [1]" on Lifetime, I stumbled across a movie on LMN that I
hadn't seen before because it aired back in June when I was in Europe!:
Shattered Vows (LMN) (aka. "From Dangerous Height", and not to be
confused with the 1984 Valerie Bertinelli TV flick of the same name!) -
This stars Christine Leverette (who just starred in Friday's "The Beach
Read Murders").
I actually was surprised, as I enjoyed this. Leverette plays a
newlywed whose husband (Will Holland) pretty much dies on their wedding
night. Before he dies, he apparently shares a disturbing secret with the
bride, though they don't show us what that secret is. Anyway, everyone
is a suspect, including the bride! There's a whole subplot with Kabby
Borders, who is the husband's recovering addict ex-wife and mother of Leverette's stepdaughter... Anyway, this was pretty twisty, so I thought
it was decent.
Then... Cassidey Fralin! Is! The Stepdaughter! (1! & 2!!)
The Stepdaughter (LMN) - A 2024 Tubi Original!!
Both this, and the sequel, I felt were poorly directed - with
something happening in a later scene pretty directly contradicting what happened in an earlier scene.
So, I'm not sure this had much going for it, aside from star
Cassidey Fralin filling out a bikini great. (Which is actually somewhat
creepy as Fralin was a child actress who is only now on the cusp of adulthood...)
Anyway, Fralin's "stepdaughter" character apparently shows up on the doorstep of her father (Blue Kimble), a hip-seeming dude who has just
married a mom (Annie Ilonzeh) with two teen sons after knowing each
other for all of 5 seconds. (Her friends rightly warns her about this,
but it falls on deaf ears!) Fralin's "stepdaughter" shows up on their
doorstep after the death of her grandmother (did "the stepdaughter"
murder Granny?! there wouldn't be a movie if she hadn't!!).
Ilonzeh's character is decidedly less than thrilled. Which escalates
to much worse than that as the clearly EVOL!1! stepdaughter stars upping
her antics.
This goes mostly where you expect it to. There is one "twist" which
I anticipated since at least the halfway mark, so it didn't surprise me.
This does end with a decent showdown, though even the aftermath of
this confused me (I think because it wasn't clearly filmed).
The Stepdaughter 2 (LMN) - A 2024 Tubi Original sequel!!
I found this to be substantially worse than the original.
So, first, they cheat - they act like it's going to be like
"Halloween 2", and pick up exactly where the first one left off. But
within a scene, it's then "2 weeks later", and then a "year later".
Second, this one seemed to focus way more on Blue Kimble's father
character than on Cassidey Fralin's EVOL stepdaughter this time, and the
EVOL stepdaughter was the one thing I mostly liked about the first film.
And it couldn't decide how much of a "sequel" it wanted to be, with
Annie Ilonzeh reappearing in this film but not as the focus.
Interestingly, this one pretty clearly sets up for a third film with
its ending... Except, there has been no "The Stepdaughter 3", and it
doesn't seem like one is planned! Lame!!
Beyond that, there is no real sports Labor Day weekend, so there wasn't
much else to watch.
I also have been watching soaps, but... pass!
What did you watch?
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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