Director: Jeff Renfroe
Writer: Based on the Book by Lois Duncan
Lifetime Movie Network’s Film Synopsis: After the shocking and untimely death of her husband, Shelley Stratton (Catherine Hicks) moves her daughter Alexis (Emily Hirst) and her adopted daughter, Laurie (Alexz Johnson), to their remote summer house in hopes of giving her family a fresh start. As Laurie begins to settle in and put her life back together, she gets the eerie feeling that she is constantly being watched. Laurie's uneasiness grows when people start claiming to see her in places that she has never been. The family’s delicate state begins to unravel when Laurie unearths the dark past, discovering a twin-sister that she never knew she had. Laurie is forced to delve deeper into her twin’s secrets, for as it turns out her twin has been locked up for years! Laurie must now understand their strange connection in order to prevent her sister from taking over her life and harming her loved ones. Based on the book by author Lois Duncan.
My Film Synopsis: After the chick from Devil’s Diary’s father dies (in this movie named “Laurie" instead of "Dominique"), she moves to the island where her family has a summer house. She has a hard time making friends, because all the boys she made out with during summer break really didn’t expect to have to see her at school every day (and now they have to explain who she is to their girlfriends). After telling everyone else in the world except Laurie that she is adopted, her mother (the nice lady from 7th Heaven who has been playing a mom in movies and on television since she could speak) finally tells her the truth, and supernatural hijynx ensue.
Suggested Tagline: “Because Your Twin is a Crazy Slut …”
Stranger with My Face is an evil twin movie with a twist that was pretty disappointing in terms of being really entertainingly bad until about the last hour, and also in no way followed the book I remember. In the book, the main character finds out she has Native American roots, which helps to explain the spiritual aspect and makes it a much more interesting story (and can you imagine the magical crap Lifetime could’ve spun out with some clichéd Native American folklore? Even one tomahawk would’ve gone a long way).
The first thing I noticed was the score, which was most likely royalty free and also sounded like a sampling of variations on the Law and Order theme song … or the soundtrack from one of two hundred romantic mystery comedies starring Julia Roberts.
As the movie begins, we get about one minute of plot set-up; we see the main character, 16-year old Laurie painting in her living room (which is apparently in a large city … which can only mean we’re in New York City, as we learn later) and visited spiritually by her father seconds before he dies when he is hit by a car just outside. I do appreciate how fitting it is that Lifetime killed off the father (who did not die in the book), because we need him gone to understand that women are much more powerful when they’re on the loose.
The great lesson learned immediately (and never really recanted or revisited) is, “When your husband dies, the right thing to teach your children is that you need to run from your problems in order to be happy again.” The family packs up their apartment in New York and heads for their summer home on an unnamed island. We are reminded of how painful death is (and why running is justified) when they arrive to find family photos (that look like they came with the frame or a wallet) at their new home.
The first night in their new home establishes that every single night on this island is so stormy that the power goes off, and they search for batteries, only to find the opportunity to tell us for the first time what the now dead father did for a living; because they find fully-charged batteries for which he was responsible, they remark, “He was pretty practical for an artist.” As we know, typically artists can’t even figure out how to put their pants on the right way, often needing to be taken care of by other people who are charged with changing their diapers, providing them with clean drool cups, etc.
The story progresses at a snail’s pace, and we realize that Laurie has been seen quite a bit in town when she hasn’t even left her bedroom. She’s even accused of hooking up with the school cripple in a boat house. If you’re going to have an astrally-projecting twin sister, you better hope she’s not a total skank, or that she has good taste.
Laurie starts to sort of make friends on her first day and befriends Helen, the school deviant, played by an actress who might turn into Shannen Doherty in 30 years. Helen’s rebellious acts include reading true crime novels on the steps when she’s supposed to be in class and acting as an armchair psychologist for anyone that tries to befriend her. She also gives Laurie permission to “go nuts,” which she seems to follow for the rest of the movie. Despite only being in the movie (at least awake and not in a coma) for about 10 minutes, she is Laurie’s best friend in the world.
I have to hand it to LMN for saving money on production costs by re-using teen couples from other Lifetime movies. Laurie hooks up with Jeff, played by the actor who was also Alexz Johnson’s one-dimensional male counterpart in Devil’s Diary. Do I smell an epic serial romance a la Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks? I think maybe there was a sale on creepy location rentals and they just decided to film two movies in one shot.
The most confusing element of this movie is its time line. I would expect some confusion of place and time, given there is a major focus on astral projection, but we never get deep enough into a traditional plot to understand how the plot gets screwy. At one point, as Laurie is going to meet Helen near the cliff outside her house, she sees herself (her twin) on the rocks. As she walks further to find Helen, she says, “Earlier tonight, I thought I saw someone on the rocks that looked just like me.” Earlier tonight as in 30 seconds ago? Most likely this type of definition of time is what makes the plot drag.
Not only does the plot not make any sense, but the mother is largely unresponsive to major events, even when Laurie is suspected of trying to strangle her sister Alex in her sleep. Whether it’s bad writing or Catherine Hicks’ complete resignation to the fact that she’s never going to have a real career, she is barely awake in most of her scenes. Her revelation to Laurie about her adoption is also treated by her as a non-event, and she explains that they left her twin behind because they were dirt poor and essentially could only afford to buy one baby.
One of the most entertaining things about this movie is the way it bases all its male characterizations on blatant stereotypes. Gordon, the douchey school stud, is the ultimate panty peeler. In order to seduce Laurie, he uses clever phrases like, “You’d rather curl up with that book instead of me?” He also tries to get her to succumb by attempting to convince her that his desire to do so is motivated by wanting to take her mind off her troubles and heal her pain. If Laurie’s twin hadn’t thrown him across the room from the next dimension, he certainly would’ve tried, “If you don’t do me, my balls will fall off and I will die,” or “If a guy stays a virgin too long, his penis explodes.”
Jeff is another excellent stereotype; the misunderstood, damaged (in this case, crippled) boy that seems to be bad but is actually good. He is also a vehicle for showing how boys (especially the cute ones) prevent girls from having super powers; Leah tells Laurie that Jeff is in the way of her truly being able to astral project. Jeff is entertaining because he does intelligent, completely logical things like walking to Laurie’s house in the middle of the night along a busy highway and hanging out in deserted places alone or standing near cliffs when he’s almost been killed by the soul of his girlfriend’s twin four or five times.
Another thing this movie does well is avoid explaining complicated topics. If you don’t want to explain astral projection, all you have to do is show a montage of a character reading every book under the sun about it. We see Laurie learning everything she can about astral projection at the school library; when she pretends she doesn’t know what her twin Leah is talking about later, Leah simply calls her on it and we then don’t have to ever know what astral projection really means or any details about it beyond the generic. We just have to trust that someone else in the movie understands the concept and will lead us down the right path.
The movie doesn’t really get entertaining until Leah convinces Laurie to astral project so she can take over her body. And she does really dastardly things when she gets in there. Her evil deeds include, making breakfast for Laurie’s family, making friends with popular girls at school by giving them compliments about their outfits, trying to sleep with hot guys that like her and trying to fix Laurie’s reputation for being a total nutbag around school by behaving like a normal teen girl.
If you can make it through the first hour and a half, this movie gets pretty good, especially if you have Schadenfreude badly enough that you might enjoy watching a crippled boy get beaten by a semi-ghost with his own cane.
Reviewed by Julia Rogers
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