PicoBlog

AM I A SERIAL KILLER?

Friends! I hope you like movies based on controversial theories of memory and a rhyme that probably came to the writer in a dream! I know I….. do? (Content warnings for violence, obviously, and also psychiatric patient abuse.)

I know you are but what am I? No wait shit that doesn’t work

We get a nice old-fashioned in medias res opening, in which a tween girl in a nightgown hides from her mother in a closet. The scene ends when we learn it was a flashback or a dream or whatever, and the person having the dream is named Natalie, and she’s eighteen now, and she’s sleeping in the street. Not in a cool way, in a sad way. Her aunt wakes her up, wraps her in a blanket, and takes her home.

In the morning, Natalie and her aunt Caroline watch the news, which is about a stay of execution being denied to a woman named Annie Weaver. This is Natalie’s mom! Her cool nickname is “Weaver the Cleaver,” because she murdered two people with a cleaver, and because it rhymes. Ten-year-old Natalie’s testimony put her mother away, says the news. It’s good that the news is here to provide the exposition usually given by like, a birthday party where people call each other “sis,” or chapter two in every Baby-Sitters Club book. Present-day Natalie says her nightmares are getting worse, and asks her aunt if she’s like her mom. Caroline says no, of course not, and Natalie goes to school.

The kids at school are being really understanding about what Natalie’s going through and giving her space and respect. Ha ha no, there’s a bunch of news clips about her mom taped to her locker, with commentary like “killer mom” Sharpied on top. The kids in this town sure read the newspaper! Her friend Jeff shows up and tears it down, and then a guy in a varsity jacket, whose name is Kent, asks her if we all have to pay the electricity bill when they execute her mom. Jeff tells him to knock it off, but then Natalie solves the problem by punching Kent in the face. Natalie is assertive and I like her.

Apparently taking charge of a situation gets you suspended for two days, as Natalie tells her shrink, Dr. Welk. She also tells him that she’s been sleepwalking a lot more, so she thinks the new meds he has her on aren’t working. He tells her to keep taking the meds, and also to go see her mom in prison (she never has), to get answers or at least closure. These both seem like terrible ideas? To me, Karen? But I’m not a doctor, I am but a simple college dropout.

Honestly I just really like Natalie’s boots here, they’re real cute

Natalie goes home and tells her aunt she got suspended. Her aunt sort of halfheartedly scolds her and says the teasing will blow over once, you know, the….thing? Happens? The thing where your mom is getting executed? Right, yes.

The next? day? Natalie goes to the prison and is seen right in to visit the death row prisoner, just like in real life. Also just like in real life, the prisoner’s hair has been freshly dyed and curled. Annie looks great! Natalie launches right into, “why did you do it?” and Annie tells her that she was just being a good mother and it’s good that Natalie doesn’t remember what happened, and let’s not talk about it. How’s school? What’s your favorite subject? You’re so tall! Annie also says that she never blamed Natalie for testifying against her, and for not replying to the many, many letters she wrote her. Natalie says she never got any letters. Uh oh! The visit is over, and Natalie asks a jail cop about her mom. The jail cop says she sure does send and write a lot of letters, and also that she says she didn’t do it. They all say that. Ha ha!

Back at home, Natalie demands to know where the letters are, and Caroline says she burned them, because Annie was always manipulative and conniving, and that people don’t change. Natalie tells her she had no right to do that, and that people do change. Do they though?

Natalie has another appointment with Dr. Welk, and she tells him that her mom seemed sad and broken (honestly to me, she seemed fine, considering), and that she’s worried that she just had information fed to her so she could get Annie convicted. The shrink tells her that that would be a very big thing to admit, and that she should consider going to the murder house and seeing if it triggers any memories. Does he suggest taking a loved one with her? Or maybe taking a beta blocker beforehand? Or anything to suggest concern for his patient? No, he does not.

Natalie’s pal Jeff brings her her homework at her part-time job at a costume shop. That Kent guy is there too, being a cool varsity jacket guy, and he tells Natalie he might be Weaver the Cleaver for Halloween. Real quick, I am sorry but I am putting my foot down, you cannot name your two teen boy characters “Jeff” and “Kent” and have me not ask, “is this a reference to Jeff Kent, former second baseman and notorious dipshit, who once broke his wrist by fucking up a wheelie on his motorcycle during spring training? It is, right? Jeff Kent, christ.” Okay. Anyway. Natalie knocks the toy cleaver out of Kent’s hands and asks him if he wants his ass kicked, but before she can follow through, her boss, Owen, kicks Kent out of the store because he’s being a dick. Owen does then tell Natalie to please not threaten the customers, it’s generally bad for business. Whatever Owen, you’re not my dad, I think my dad is dead or something, not sure if they ever explained that.

This is Kent pretending he’s being electrocuted, Kent is a really gifted mimic, like a pretty smart bird

That night, Natalie takes her meds and goes to bed, but then there’s a scene of Kent running through the woods screaming, and then he gets hacked with a cleaver. Hell yeah. But uh oh, Natalie is sleepwalking through the woods while having a nightmare/flashback about her mom finding her in the closet. Her doctor finds her, just happening to be out in the middle of the night, and drives her home. He agrees not to tell her aunt about her sleepwalking if she doubles her medication, which seems fine and ethical. As soon as Natalie gets inside, she sees what looks like blood on her cozy socks. Whuh ohhhhhh!

In the morning, Caroline apologizes to Natalie for burning the letters, and Natalie is like, “oh ha ha yeah thanks, I slept through the night, don’t even worry about it.” Caroline gets a Business phone call and goes off to do some Business, and Natalie grabs the keys to the murder house, which I guess is just vacant now? Eight years later? She heads over, but before she opens the door, she gets a call from Jeff and decides to just go to school instead. Also, someone in a hoodie was apparently spying on her from like ten feet away and she didn’t notice. Head up, Natalie.

When she gets to school, Natalie is called to the principal’s office, where a cop would like to ask her where she was last night. Why, she was home, all night, thank you for asking, says Natalie. Officer Lawrence tells her that Kent, the guy who she’d been loudly arguing with and threatening lately, was murdered last night (hell yeah) and asks if Natalie knows of anyone else who might have had a dispute with him. Well, says Natalie, the thing is, he sucked. So.

Caroline arrives home from her Business to find Dr. Welk waiting for her, and he tells her about the sleepwalking. Snitch. He’s obligated to tell the authorities if he thinks Natalie is a danger to others, and asks if there’s anything else Natalie has lied about lately. Caroline sees him out, but then goes in Natalie’s room and finds her bloody jimjams. Also, you can’t have a character named Lawrence and a character named Welk, I think this is illegal. Jeff Kent? Lawrence Welk? I am trapped in someone’s brain and I hate it.

The prison has a very liberal visitation policy, and Natalie is taking full advantage of this. She tells her mom that she’s worried she murdered Kent while sleepwalking, and Annie says to definitely not talk to anyone, not even her doctor, and to destroy what she was wearing last night. Is this visit being recorded? It doesn’t come up. Natalie, in some distress, says that she just wishes she could remember things! Annie reiterates that she’s just trying to protect her. Gosh you guys, I think this Annie Weaver might have some secrets!!

I wanted to google “can you have a curling wand in prison” but I don’t want to get put on a list

When Natalie gets home, Caroline confronts her about lying about sleepwalking, but before they can really get into it, a whole bunch of cops show up at the door. They know she lied about where she was last night, and they would like to see what she was wearing. Sure, says Caroline, and pulls it out of the dryer. Ha ha, owned. Officer Lawrence “wonders” why Natalie would lie to them, and Caroline is like, oh you “wonder”? You “wondered” that, while you were questioning her without a guardian or a lawyer present? ACAB, fuck off, Lawrence. After the cops leave, Natalie asks what was on her pajamas, and Caroline says, “spots,” and that she was just trying to protect her. Natalie is getting pretty tired of everyone trying to protect her.

Natalie makes a quick stop at Dr. Welk’s office to yell at him for talking to the cops, then gets a call from Caroline about someone who might be able to help her remember the murder thing. It’s a bartender, who used to be a cop, so he’s moving up in life. Natalie asks him if he’s sure Annie murdered those two people, and he tells her that well, your testimony is what convinced the jury, so sure, and also don’t believe what Annie tells you. She leaves the bar, and the bartender has his own flashback, this movie is generous with the flashbacks. He is asking ten-year-old Natalie about some creepy drawings that she did, and she tells him that she was mad at the couple who got murdered, because I guess they’d been boarding with Annie and Natalie and now they were leaving. They were dead to Natalie, so she drew them dead. There was a lot going on in ten-year-old Natalie’s head, I think.

Whoops, Natalie is an hour late to work because of the whole “stopping at a bar to try to recover her memories” thing, and that, combined with the fact that cops have been stopping by and asking questions about her, means that she is fired by small business tyrant Owen. Natalie knocks over a display on her way out, because Natalie rules. When she gets home, there’s an alarm system being installed in her house, so that Caroline will know if Natalie is sleepwalking. “Why, in case I murder someone?” Natalie asks, to the moderate concern of the guys installing the alarms. She tells Caroline not to bother trying to help her and just leave her alone, and then takes her meds and goes to bed.

Uh oh, the alarm goes off that night, and when Caroline looks for Natalie in the immediate vicinity she’s already gone. This seems like a flaw in the alarm system? The costume shop guy is still in his store (what time is it??) when someone comes into the shop, and then Owen gets cleavered. So long! And then Caroline finds Natalie walking the streets, standing in front of the murder house. I do not know how far that is from the costume shop, but there are implications.

There’s a scene where the cops are at the costume shop, and one of them says “defensive wounds on his hands indicate that he tried to defend himself,” which lol yes. We also see that Owen has had large black buttons placed over his eyes. The cops go to Natalie’s, but Caroline tells them to fuck off. Officer Lawrence, as a parting thought, tells her that they’re actually trying to help Natalie. No she isn’t.

Still being followed by the person in the hoodie, Natalie goes to the costume shop to look at it and be sad. She does finally notice that she’s being followed, and it turns out it’s her friend Jeff. And he’s got a big knife in his bag (but not a cleaver)! He tells her it’s for protection but she is now convinced that he is the killer, and honestly there’s not a normal reason to carry a ten-inch chef’s knife in your backpack. Natalie takes the knife and runs away from Jeff. Caroline picks her up and Natalie shares her theory. No, says Caroline, I asked Jeff to follow you around with a knife and keep an eye on you. Oh, these people are just normal reasons all day. What was he going to do if he ran into the cleaver person? Or if Natalie was the cleaver person? Knife fight? Is that what Caroline was envisioning?

There’s a quick scene where Lawrence looks through an evidence box and says, “why aren’t they here?” and then it’s over. Okay.

When Caroline and Natalie get home, there are a bunch of reporters at the house asking Natalie if she killed Kent and Owen, and why did she visit her mom, and what does she know about the people her mom killed. They offer no comment, and when they get inside Natalie tells Caroline to stop lying on her behalf, and stop protecting her, and she’s not her mom.

Officer Lawrence goes to that bar to talk to the ex-cop and asks him if there’s anything he left out of his report. Something like maybe how the victims had buttons placed over their eyes? And also, where are Natalie’s increasingly hostile drawings? The bartender says that he tore up the drawings, which were of the murder victims with buttons for eyes. He destroyed the evidence because Annie Weaver was trouble, he says, which hints at some more things that this movie will not be exploring, and also he is very drunk. Well, this is a whole thing now.

Okay, yeah, you can see how this looks bad, but maybe it’s a Coraline thing (I have not seen Coraline)

Annie’s lawyer goes to the prison to tell her that she’s getting a retrial because of this, and also that Natalie is now the prime suspect in all these murders. So like, good news bad news, but more good news: her hair still looks great! And Officer Lawrence announces that because potentially exculpatory evidence was destroyed, Weaver the Cleaver’s conviction has been overturned and she’s being released. I’m so glad that this is how it works in real life! The investigation has been reopened, and Natalie wants to tell the cops about Jeff and his big knife, but Caroline says it would look bad. Natalie takes off.

Wow when they said Annie was getting released from prison, they meant like right now. Her lawyer leads her out and tells her that this whole thing is going to be financially worth it, don’t even worry about it. Well, she would be only the second white woman released from death row in this country, as far as I can tell, maybe there’s a book or a settlement in there.

Natalie is back at the murder house, and this time she actually goes inside. She goes upstairs to the closet where she hid from Annie, and this time she remembers that she, Natalie, was holding the cleaver, and Annie was asking her to give it to her. Natalie runs out of the house and says, “finally I have answered the question posed by the title of this movie, yes, I am!”

On her way to the motel where she’ll be staying, Annie stops by Caroline’s house and asks to see Natalie and also for the keys to the murder house. Also, as soon as the dust settles, she will be taking Natalie with her and moving away. Natalie is eighteen? She can do what she wants? Well, she can’t murder people. She can murder Kent. That seems fine. Annie leaves the house and checks into the motel.

A distraught Natalie comes home and tells Caroline that she remembers what happened, and to stop protecting her because she’s not worth it. Caroline tells her she’s remembering it wrong, and also that psychogenic amnesia is like, a very dicey thing to get into, and that it’s basically impossible to distinguish a recovered memory from a false one without corroborating evidence, but Natalie disagrees.

Officer Lawrence is doing cop things; she sees Natalie on surveillance footage near one of the murders. Okay.

Natalie goes to Annie’s motel and tells her that she remembered that she did it, and that she’s going to turn herself in but wanted some time with her mom first. Annie tells her that she should get some rest, take one of your pills and we’ll fall asleep together. When Natalie says she threw away her pills, Annie looks alarmed but then tells her to just put her head in my lap here, on the end of the bed, you can sleep here. This does not look comfortable, at all, in case you were wondering, and Natalie is still wearing shoes, but she falls asleep anyway. When she wakes up, it’s dark and Annie is gone, having left a note that she’ll be back, and Natalie pokes through the box Annie left prison with. She finds some crayon drawings of the non-murdery variety and also some love notes in what she immediately recognizes as the handwriting of her doctor. He’s not a good doctor. I see this clearly now.

There are pillows, behind you, do you see them, the pillows, no, okay, that’s, it’s fine

The obvious thing to do now is to break into Dr. Welk’s office, so Natalie does that. Also Jeff is still following her? Did someone murder Jeff and now he’s a ghost who just watches Natalie 24 hours a day? Jeff, or Jeff’s ghost, texts Natalie when he sees Dr. Welk get back to his office, which is also his home, and then stalls him by talking about his feelings for a while while Natalie flips through a file with a bunch of news clips about her mom, and his visitor’s badge to the prison with the name Daniel Sturmin on it. Welk finally ushers Jeff out of his house by giving him his card in a very threatening manner, and Natalie slips out and thanks Jeff for giving her the heads up. He thanks her for thinking he was “badass enough to be a murderer.” Teen boys have weird ideas about masculinity.

Lawrence comes to the house to arrest Natalie for murder. What time is it? It’s before Halloween, so sunset should be at what, 6:30? It’s been dark for a while! How long did it take Natalie to get to Welk’s house? How did she even get there? I don’t know. Anyway Natalie’s not there to get arrested, and Caroline texts Jeff to tell him what’s up. In Jeff’s car outside Dr. Welk’s house, Natalie tries to explain what’s going on but she doesn’t really know what’s going on. She knows the doctor is setting her up somehow, with information he gets from Annie, and she’s just realized how weird it was that he was there to pick her up after Kent got murdered, perhaps that is definitely because he killed Kent. Jeff says they should go to the police, and Natalie says fuck that. Caroline calls Natalie to tell her the cops are tracing her phone (thanks Caroline), and then Dr. Welk leaves and the teens follow him.

Welk pulls up to the murder house, and Annie’s there already. He sneaks up behind her and grabs her. The house is nice, very like, midcentury California? Stucco with ivy growing on it, and french doors in the back. When Natalie comes in, having left her cell phone to be tracked in Jeff’s car, she finds Welk and Annie making out on a couch, and Welk saying things like, “is this where they were murdered?” but in a sexy way? It is disgusting. When the lovebirds (yuck) notice Natalie, Welk courteously tells her that they set her up so that Annie could be freed, and yeah he killed Kent and Owen and put blood on her clothes to make her think she did it, and did the thing with the buttons to make the cops thinks he did it. Natalie asks her mom how she could do this, and Annie points out that Natalie put her away, so you know, turnabout is fair play. But then Annie pulls a knife out of the couch and stabs Welk a whole bunch while saying things like, “oh Natalie, how could you,” because she’s just so good at framing people for murder I guess (she’s actually really bad at it!!). Natalie runs upstairs to hide.

Caroline comes to the murder house in a sensible outfit of a light sweater and trousers, and Annie attacks her. Natalie hears the commotion and comes down to wrestle the knife away from Annie. She also has just remembered that Annie killed those people, and tried to pin it on her, which like, yes? That’s the whole movie? “Somebody had to be guilty,” says Annie. Again, yes? We then have a flashback of ten-year-old Natalie coming downstairs to find the boarders murdered in their bed, and Annie putting buttons over their eyes. “It’s a game!” says flashback Annie, but Natalie sees the cleaver and runs up into her closet with it. In the present, Natalie asks Annie why she did it, and the answer is: they got real uppity with me and you liked them better. Women, amirite? Annie advances on Natalie, saying, “she just went crazy, killed the shrink and then her poor aunt Caroline,” like, no I get it, Annie, thank you, you’re trying to frame your daughter for murder and you’re doing a really bad job of it, and then she says to Natalie, “prove you’re my daughter,” and Natalie says no, and then Annie grabs for the knife just as the cops show up and shoot her in the shoulder and arrest her. I have been thinking about this for a few days and I’m still not sure what “prove you’re my daughter” means, in this context?

Anyway, Caroline and Natalie walk out of the house and Jeff, who is there too, asks Natalie, “is your mom…?” and Natalie says, “my mom is right here,” and hugs Caroline. It’s sweet. They walk off arm in arm and I had to rewind it to make sure they didn’t say “let’s go home,” like at the end of approximately 60% of the Lifetime movies I’ve seen, but they don’t. The end! If you get a second, please reply to this and tell me, in like two sentences, what you think the plot of this movie was, because I’m still not totally sure!

PS: oh hey there’s this really weird thing on the IMDb page for this movie that looks like fetish art of Natalie and Caroline, click here to see that if you really want to, discuss amongst yourselves, byyyyeeeeeee

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