The Darkest, Most Twisted Lifetime Movies
Vote up the Lifetime Originals that feel like horror movies.
Ever since the first Lifetime TV movie, Memories of Murder, aired in 1990, the cable channel has reliably dished up some of the small screen's greatest women-in-peril masterpieces.
These made-for-TV films have to walk a fine line. They can center on murder, addiction, abuse, and injustice, but they can't dial up the violence and they can't deviate too drastically from conventions. Lifetime true stories are especially memorable when they dip into slaying, scandal, and sin. Once in a while, Lifetime's fine line snaps, and the grotesqueness of shoving heavy subject matter into a TV movie mold becomes obvious.Â
There's no shortage of controversial Lifetime original films ripped from the headlines, like The Craigslist Killer, Prosecuting Casey Anthony, Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy, or even taken from history, such as Lizzie Borden Took an Ax. The channel's best thrillers and rom coms also sport outrageous titles like, Mother, May I Sleep with Danger and I Me Wed.Â
The best dark Lifetime movies are so diabolically twisted, they'll send you scrambling to gaze upon Heironymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights" to lighten the mood.
- 1188 VOTES
Death Of A Cheerleader (1994)
Photo: LifetimeDeath of a Cheerleader, also known as A Friend to Die For, follows a meek character named Angela who is desperate to become a cheerleader and fit in with her high school's cool girls, who run in a gang-style clique called the Larks. Stacey Lockwood is the lead Lark, and she's a real meanie.
Eventually, Angela stabs Stacey to death and Monica, a fringe Lark, takes the heat for the murder. Angela skips along for many months until guilt consumes her and she rediscovers Catholicism. She finally cops to the crime and is sentenced to house arrest until she's 25.
In the grand oeuvre of edgy Lifetime original movies, this one racks up a lot of points, especially with the whole "whoops, I guess I stabbed someone to death" angle.
- 299 VOTESPhoto: Lifetime
Leah Tyman doesn't need a fancy psychologist to tell her the five stages of grief have it all wrong; all shes needs is a new name and a kitchen knife.
When her brother dies in a car accident, Leah decides to enact revenge by changing her identity, stalking, and ultimately marrying the doctor who tried but failed to save her sibling. She starts by killing off her new husband's patients in order to ruin his reputation before finally confronting the good doctor himself.
- 3100 VOTES
Hit And Run (1999)
Photo: LifetimeThis TV movie does an effective if slightly hokey job of encapsulating the paranoia, dread, and the bell jar-style suffocation that comes with bottling up your guilt and harboring a deep, dark secret.
The star of this film knocks a child off her bike and into a coma in a car accident then flees the scene. This is followed by an unraveling of her entire life.
- 4110 VOTES
Locked Away (2010)
Photo: LifetimeTaylin is a pregnant high school senior who seeks advice from her school counselor, Chloe, about the best way to move forward. Taylin's single mom, Sasha, encourages her to set the baby up for adoption. Chloe's idea is a bit more radical, however. It involves kidnapping and killing Taylin and her boyfriend Kevin and keeping the baby to raise as her own.
Carnage ensues and the film dissociates from any shred of human decency most Lifetime movies at least attempt to maintain.
- 571 VOTESPhoto: Lifetime
Lifetime has an extensive "At 17" series of films (Murdered at 17, Pregnant at 17, Missing at 17, Betrayed at 17) and they all reliably serve up the channel's classic mix of scandal, dread, and morality.
Accused at 17 is the most twisted and memorable because it embraces death, lying, toxic friendships, pranks gone horribly wrong, and a general feeling that hope has been destroyed.
- 673 VOTES
Sorority Surrogate (2014)
Photo: LifetimeSorority girl Valerie becomes a surrogate mother for a married couple unable to conceive on their own. When the couple dies in a sketchy car crash, with-child Valerie freaks out until grandma Maureen, mother of the recently deceased husband, offers solace. Granny takes Valerie under her wing and into her home, where she handcuffs the pregnant college student to a bed, planning to kill her and raise the grandkid to her liking. Oh, and it's also pretty clear Maureen killed her son and daughter-in-law so she could single-handedly mold her family's next generation.
When the story gets grisly, it's a good thing there's a handy can of air freshener within reach to function as the world's most potent self-defense weapon.
- 782 VOTES
She's Too Young (2004)
Photo: LifetimeHigh school freshman Hannah is busy navigating friends, homework, boys, and her relationship with her mom Trish (played by Marcia Gay Harden), when a raging syphilis outbreak charges through campus.
After the sickness starts getting around, syphilis comes up in just about every line of every conversation any character has for the rest of the movie. As soon as Hannah's best friend Dawn casually lets slip, "Hey, guess what guys? I have syphilis," Trish goes on a one-mom crusade to battle the disease and the stigma it carries.
- 861 VOTESPhoto: Lifetime
This film would be gnarly enough if the producers stuck to the A-plot: blonde high school senior and science geek, Casey, is befriended by three sophisticated popular girls who want to recruit her into a network of high-dollar teen sex workers. This network is run by school cop, Officer Jack, who secretly functions as the big pimp on campus.
This didn't quite cut it for Lifetime though. No, Casey's dad also has to be a philandering jerk, and all the family drama and sex work complications converge in a third-act hostage situation that leads to an attempted murder-suicide in the living room.
- 947 VOTES
On Thin Ice (2003)
Photo: LifetimeDiane Keaton stars as drug-dealing and eventually drug-abusing single mother Patsy McCartle in On Thin Ice. This flick has also been called Breaking Through and Defending My Children, although Meth Mom would've been more to the point.
A 2003 review in The New York Times describes Keaton's performance as "disappointing," specifying she "mostly screams and shrieks a lot" throughout the film. What is truly disturbing, however, is how the story of a welfare mom descending into Breaking Bad madness clashes with Lifetime's Snuggle Fabric Softener commercial breaks.
- 1038 VOTES
Left To Die (2012)Â
Photo: LifetimeLeft to Die stars Barbara Hershey as Sandra, a tourist heading to Ecuador on vacation, but instead of taking in Quito's nifty colonial architecture and bonding with plump, lazy iguanas on the Galápagos Islands, Sandra gets wrongly accused of running drugs and thrown in a South American slammer.
Her daughter's meandering long-distance efforts to free her, the frustrating corruption of the Ecuadorian prison system, and the nightmare of prison life itself gradually rip apart Sandra's will to survive.
- 1147 VOTESPhoto: Lifetime
This story presents a hard-working mother named Nancy with an alternate vision of her life during the holiday season, one in which she follows the path of stay-at-home parenthood instead of her successful career in advertising.
The movie message that a woman has to choose a career or a family mixes menacingly with the sappy magical realism and uncanny trippiness of this alternate reality story.
