Wow to say that this movie was wild, would be putting it mildly, I kind of regret not paying much attention to it. Nowadays I don't really have much hope for LTMs, and know not to hold them to a standard that's too high and unrealistic for them to reach.
With that being said, this film was like a roller coaster of events. But I must admit I saw the twist at the end coming a mile away. I had a weird feeling about Sasha from the start. Especially since she was the one who convinced Kelli to start dating again after her husband's death. So I knew she was in on Dan's plan. What I didn't see coming though was the ending (I won't spoil it here because it's definitely something that needs to be seen for yourself).
Now to get to what I was talking about in the title, this was very similar to the 2021 Lifetime movie, "Fatal Fiancé". Where this woman named Lea was engaged to her fiancé Mark, the man of her dreams as she said. But then the fiancé's ex-girlfriend starts showing up in places and warns Lea not to marry him, and even kidnaps her at one point. But Leah didn't realize that Faith was telling the truth until it was almost too late. This movie was very similar to that. Though I thought that Kelli came off as naive and easily manipulated compared to Leah who began to have doubts about Mark
towards the movie's climax.
There were a couple of differences between the two movies though:
* There were multiple women that Dan had manipulated, while Faith was Mark/Brian's only girlfriend before Leah.
* Dan had an accomplice (Sasha), whilst Brian worked alone.
* This movie did not have crazy and over-the-top editing like FF did.
* This movie was filmed in Canada while FF was filmed in Los Angeles, California (probably not a big difference but one that I felt the need to point out)
* Dan's plan was to scam Kelli of her life savings, while Brian just wanted to control and abuse Leah just like he did Faith.
* And as aforementioned, Leah started to have a bad feeling abt Mark/Brian towards the end, while Kelli believed that Dan was innocent and Mona was the one who was dangerous until she revealed the whole truth to Kelli after kidnapping her. (Talk about ignoring the red flags!)
Other than those six differences the similarities are pretty uncanny. Natalie Brown was excellent in this. I loved her in "Remember Me, Mommy?" And "Smart House Killer". Erin Agostino, who played Sasha was great too! The acting by the brother, Dan, and Mona were a solid 6/10.
Overall I rate the movie a 7.9/10 and the acting a solid 7 stars. This was definitely better than Saturday night's movie that's for sure.
