Lifetime’s ‘Secrets in the Foundation’ Offers a Bland, Familiar Haunting [Review]

It’s been a good run, but the streak of solid-to-great Lifetime titles has come to a screeching halt with Secrets in the Foundation. A bland, familiar, and poorly acted entry in the “Inspired by a true story” subgenre, the film’s most interesting element is the question of whether the house at the center of the story is, in fact, haunted. And to most horror fans, the answer will be very obvious, very early on.

Following the tragic death of the family patriarch due to cancer, mom Elena (Kristi Murdock) moves her daughter Sadie (Julia Terranova) and her father Jim (Ken Lyle) from LA to small town suburbia. They secure the giant old Crane house for a steal, but in no time the family discovers that realtor Malcomb (Christopher Sky) wasn’t forthcoming about the property’s sordid history.

The cold open briefly features previous homeowners Lila (Christie Leverette) and Tim (Tyler Gillett) fleeing the house in the dead of night, so the audience already knows there’s something going on. Later Sheriff Danforth (Bradford Haynes) and Sadie’s bitchy classmate Brittany (Madison Reitz) fill in the details: the house previously belonged to a rich, reclusive family with a dark past.

It turns out that the Cranes isolated themselves from the outside world until the house was foreclosed and the sole remaining member, Nathaniel (Ken Lyle) was evicted. Since then, the property has been home to countless weird occurrences, which means nearly everyone in town has grown superstitious of it.

So far, so good, right? Start with a spooky house, add some lore and bizarre events, then sprinkle in some mother/daughter drama, and you’ve got the foundation of a decent mystery.

Almost immediately, however, it’s clear that writer Daniel West and director David Benullo are just going through the motions. We’ve seen this story countless times before, and better. The characters are shallow and one-note, the supporting characters pop up to deliver exposition in a scene or two and then disappear, and, most frustratingly, Elena spends nearly two-thirds of the film refusing to believe her daughter, even when increasingly wild things are happening around her.

There’s an explanation for Elena’s reticence to acknowledge the supernatural, but it comes so late in the film that it feels more like an excuse than a genuine character beat. Instead Secrets in the Foundation adopts a rigid narrative formula and sticks with it: Sadie sees or hears something suspicious and freaks out. Elena comes in and dismisses her concerns and the pair argue about leaving the house. Rinse, lather, repeat.

It’s fine the first few times, but these interactions get stale very quickly. There’s a brief spark when the kindly neighbour Louise (Sharl Hill) shows up after a failed yard sale and proudly declares herself immune to superstition, but the character barely gets anything to do. This is a persistent issue that also affects Brittany, the mean girl at school who gives Sadie an earful about the house’s dark history, then is never seen again.

The only real supporting character of note is Sadie’s one and only friend at school, Dylan (Collier Randall). The gay bestie only really pops up to deliver a ridiculous quip or offer additional exposition, though. Dylan is clearly meant to be the fun comic relief in an otherwise serious supernatural film, but all of his jokey bits go over like a lead balloon.

Not helping matters is the fact that both Randall and Terranova’s line deliveries leave a lot to be desired. As a result, all of their scenes together are particularly challenging. Meanwhile, Sadie is so dour and whiny that it’s hard to muster any energy to invest in her plight.

Then there is the casting and locations. Terranova and Murdock look (and are often styled) more like sisters than mother/daughter, and Lyle is only coded as a grandpa because he has white hair and a narratively contrived hearing aid (literally: his only job in the film is to repeatedly comment on and/or fiddle with his hearing aid).

So, the three family members barely differ in age (at least in presentation) and the acting from half of the leads is mediocre. That leaves the house and the actual hauntings to do the heavy lifting, but things aren’t much better on this front.

The exposition about the Crane family emphasizes that they lived in the house for countless generations, and there are stories about secret passages and bricked off rooms. What is captured onscreen, however, is a large, relatively modern house with a completely normal lay-out. Then, when things get hectic in the finale, the previously unseen parts of the house that the characters move through are very obviously another set/location. Add to this a collection of bland haunting elements (barely-audible whispers in the wall, flickering lights, etc) and it all just feels very amateurish.

Bad acting, bad casting, an unconvincing setting and lackluster supernatural elements doom Secrets in the Foundation from the start. If you’re a Lifetime completionist the film is watchable, but there are far better, more interesting films in the LMN stable.

Secrets in the Foundation airs on Lifetime Movie Network on April 4.

The post Lifetime’s ‘Secrets in the Foundation’ Offers a Bland, Familiar Haunting [Review] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.