Lifetime Review: 'Killer Caregiver'

Things are already pretty tough for Mariah Wilson (Nicole Hayden). On top of struggling to care for her autistic son Jacob (Jaeden Bettencourt) while working a stressful job, this film opens with Mariah on the receiving end of unwanted sexual harassment from client Graham Harper (Matt Socia). An accident that occurs while Mariah tries to flee Graham leaves Graham dead and Mariah with a badly broken arm, requiring her to hire the services of live-in caregiver Tess Harper (Days of our Lives star Camila Banus).

While Tess initially appearing to be a perfect and doting caregiver, in addition to bonding with the shy Jacob, Tess is quickly revealed to have an ulterior motive for integrating herself into the Wilson house. As it turns out, Graham was Tess's father, and her mother became so distraught over her husband's death that she killed herself. After learning of Mariah's involvement in her father's death, Tess decided to avenge her parents by destroying Mariah's life--and she will stop at no end to get her disturbed version of justice.

One thing I noticed throughout the movie was that it appeared to be taking cues from a more popular and renowned revenge flick: 1992's The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, right down to the Wilson family employing a mentally handicapped handyman. But despite that, and the fact that the movie goes through the other motions of a typical Lifetime movie, Killer Caregiver is a solid thriller, thanks largely in part to the casting and the way the plot deviates itself from similar films in Lifetime's catalog.

As played by Nicole Hayden, Mariah is a fiercely likable and sympathetic protagonist, with her struggles to juggle a high stakes career and raising an autistic child being achingly realistic, with Hayden and George Stults (who plays Mariah's doting husband Greg, who is a much welcome change from the oblivious husband archetype that's oft to pop up in Lifetime films) playing well off each other and selling the struggle it takes to care for a mentally disabled child. In another case of strong casting, Camila Banus is obviously having a blast playing the psychotic and ferociously vengeful Tess. Part way through the film, Tess all but drops her kind and generous demeanor and makes it clear that she will stop at nothing to make the woman she blames for her family's destruction suffer, making her both a terrifying and fiercely determined villain you'll love and hate all at once.

Along with the film having an authentic emotional feel to it, it also delivers all the thrills people come to Lifetime expecting in a way that feels neither rushed nor overly drawn out. While in some movies it might be a mistake to reveal the villain's backstory and motivation as early as Killer Caregiver does, in this case, it works well given Banus' strong portrayal of Tess, making the stripping of the mystery around her feel natural rather than the movie tipping its' hand too early. The conclusion also goes further than one might expect, and rather than feeling like excessive padding, this allows for the climax to be far more tense now that the viewer has had their expectations disproved and are now in the dark on how everything will unfold.

Overall, Killer Caregiver is a very well-constructed movie, obviously written and directed by people who know how to keep an audience in anticipation and how to craft strong, relatable, and impactful characters and putting this movie in the ranks of other great Lifetime thrillers like Deadly Exchange. This is definitely one Lifetime film that delivers everything that makes the channel great.

Score: 10 out of 10 red kites.