I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: nothing can beat a Lifetime thriller if you shut off your brain and just want to have a good time. Their new entry to the genre is Roxanne Boisvert’s Our Mother’s Secret Affair. The film isn’t as gross as the title suggests, but it’s interesting enough to keep you hooked until the very end. A simple, modest, not too try-hard thriller that doesn’t lose focus on the main point, this Boisvert movie does everything right except the fashion choices of the characters.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the movie?
Kasey breaks into Diana’s house, and Diana’s daughter Fran calls the police on the girl who’s soon revealed to be her half sister. Kasey’s father Troy had an affair with Diana years ago, and when Diana got pregnant, Troy and his wife Elle (who can’t bear a child) decided to adopt the baby. Now fresh into her teenage rebel era, Kasey finding the truth shakes both families. Diana’s a single mom to Fran, as her husband has passed. Elle gets insecure over Troy and Diana reconnecting again. Elle’s mother Gloria and her brother Jake are overly concerned about her, and their behavior towards Diana gets extremely dangerous. Troy’s business and family troubles get intertwined, and the two sisters are left to deal with the mess the adults left before them.
Why does Lynda kill Peg?
Soon after the two families get back in touch, a girl named Lynda receives an anonymous call with the details of Diana and Fran. She soon takes on the false identity of a college student and meets Fran. Lynda manages to get along with Fran quickly, and they bond over playing basketball. Diana asks Fran to invite her new friend over to the dinner party. The small party is hosted by Diana’s sister Peg, as she’s soon going on a holiday to Hawaii. Lynda finds herself in an awkward position when Diana and Peg bring up Texas references, and she doesn’t understand any of it despite claiming she’s moved from Texas. Lynda leaves the room by making an excuse and goes to the garage to fill the fuel tank of Diana’s car with bleach. Peg’s suspicion are raised and she follows her to the garage, but nothing conclusive comes out of it. Lynda feels threatened that she might’ve noticed something, and she follows Peg back to her home. After breaking into the house while Peg is asleep, she stabs Peg and dumps her body at a construction site.
Was Elle having an affair?
Troy’s business partner, Don, constantly wants to talk with Elle, but she refuses to talk with him. With Kasey and her getting into fights over pretty much everything, Elle seems clueless about how to deal with the situation. Elle communicates with Troy about how she feels threatened by Diana coming back into their lives. Troy seems like he’s over Diana, and he reassures Elle that she’s the only woman he wants to be with. Elle soon goes to meet Don, whom she kissed once a year ago at a cocktail party. They haven’t been in touch ever since, and Don has a different concern on his mind. Troy has been holding off a fundraiser road trip that’s important for their business, and the company might be shut down if Troy keeps being this way. Elle talks sense into Troy, and he decides to hop on the plane to Europe after a few days.
Is Gloria trying to kill Diana?
Gloria is a woman who’s more obsessed with her family than Vin Diesel from the Fast and Furious franchise. She’s constantly making phone calls to someone, which almost sounds like she wants Diana’s head on a plate. Her son Jake is out on parole, and he’s too weirdly obsessed with his sister and her family. Jake shows up at Diana’s doorstep randomly to threaten her, and this is not the first time he’s done that. Back when Elle caught Troy cheating on her with Diana, Jake threatened to kill her. Fran takes out the car and crashes it into the sidewalk, but she gets out of the accident without a scratch. Diana gets worried when Peg hasn’t called her for days, and she tries to go check on her whereabouts with one of Peg’s work colleagues. Lynda has followed Diana here, and she tries to sneak up on her, planning to bash her head. Diana drops her car keys on the ground and sees Lynda’s shadow behind her. Just as she turns, a car pulls up on the driveway, and Lynda runs away. The next day, Diana finds out that Gloria has sued her for breaching the adoption agreement and wants to put a restraining order on her to protect her daughter. So the calls Gloria made were to her lawyer, not a killer.
Who is plotting the killings?
After Lynda fails again in her attempt to murder Diana, the person who’s orchestrating this finally shows up. Gloria’s housekeeper, Andrew, secretly loves her and has a pipedream of marrying her someday. When Andrew saw Gloria in distress regarding Diana breaking up with her family, he thought he should take care of the problem. He completely misinterpreted Gloria’s kind behavior toward him, and he behaves like a desperate clown, dreaming about marrying her someday. Lynda is Andrew’s daughter, and his wife tried to kill her when she was young. Gloria helped get her treated, and Lynda feels indebted to Gloria for her life. She’s willing to follow everything her father is telling her to do, and she has already taken one life. Andrew gives her a bottle of potassium chloride, intending to inject Gloria with it so that the death looks natural.
Did Kasey and Fran save Diana?
Fran finds a bead in Lynda’s car that looks identical to the beads on Peg’s necklace the last time Fran saw her. Fran keeps her cool and contacts Kasey, and she starts to dig up Lynda’s history, while Fran decides to go to Peg’s house to check. While Kasey is looking into Lynda’s digital footprint, Elle sees it and tells her that she’s the daughter of Andrew, her grandmother’s housekeeper. Kasey gets Lynda’s last name from Elle and runs a public data search on Lynda Teasdale. She tells Fran that Lynda has a criminal record for aggravated assault and assault with a weapon. Fran finds the same beads scattered all around Peg’s house, and she figures Lynda must’ve done something to her. She calls Diana and tells her about it, and Jake too has figured out what went wrong with Diana’s car. Jake tells Diana that someone put bleach in her fuel tank, and she needs to stay put. Andrew shows up at Jake’s garage, trying to manipulate him into joining his plan. When Jake refuses to join forces with him, Andrew tries to kill him, but Jake dodges and knocks Andrew out.
In Our Mother’s Secret Affair‘s ending, Jake calls Elle and tells her to go to Diana’s house immediately, and Kasey joins Elle. Lynda breaks into Diana’s home, and she sneaks up on her with the syringe of death in her hands. Diana once again sees it coming and dodges, and Fran comes back home to see Lynda trying to murder her mother. Lynda now takes out a gun and holds both of them at gunpoint, and Elle and Kasey enter the house. Lynda turns to them, and Diana uses the opportunity to break a glass vase on her head, and Lynda is pretty much gone for hours after such a blow. The movie ends with the two families getting along together, putting their differences aside, and you can choose not to sit through the painful live-laugh-love after Lynda’s fall.
