Ever wake up on a Thursday and find yourself saying, "Life would be okay if I could just have a smoothie and watch an early '90s made-for-TV crime saga?"
Really? Just me?
Sometimes I think of Tubi as my own personal Needful Things. It just knows exactly what I desire and delivers it. The cost is a few ads, which is only slightly worse than my soul.
What a fine time to be alive.
Quick Plot: Librarian Susan is four months pregnant but separated from her cheating husband. Teenage daughter Justine is bitter about the demise of her parents' marriage and rebels by making out with her boyfriend Ryan, turning mean girl to former best friend Ashley, and being snotty to her mother.
While Susan is out enjoying a sweet date with her old high school flame Eric, Justine is having a complicated girls night. Ashley has told her that Ryan has been cheating with fellow cheerleader Vicki (such a cheating cheerleader name), and Justine has both gals over to chat.
Things don't go well.
Vicki storms out with Ashley and Justine fast behind. There's hair pulling and screeching, and before you know it, Vicki is reported missing. The cops, including detective Eric, trace her last steps back to a lying Justine right as a jogger stumbles on her dead body in the woods.
Clovis is a small town. Justine and Ashley are the prime suspects, with both girls tangling themselves in their knotty lies. Susan quickly becomes an outcast, and her burgeoning relationship with the case's head investigator doesn't look good for anyone.
Violation of Trust, also listed as She Says She's Innocent, is a perfectly fine little TV movie. The story seems annoyingly straightforward until a third act twist, at which point you as the viewer will kick yourself for not spotting the obvious casting choice that tells you what you need to know about the film's real villain.
High Points
Director Charles Correll lucks out with a decent cast. Katey Sagal was a few years into her epic Married...With Children run and clearly wanted to show a different side of herself as a much more sympathetic (but still quite daft) mother. Charlotte Ross had just left Eve Donovan behind on Days of Our Lives and easily transitions as a slightly realer, still spoiled teen. These are very watchable women.
Low Points
Maybe it's just a very 2020s read, but I wanted so much more from what seemed like an incredibly toxic relationship between Justine and Ashley. Was Ashley in love with her too-cool best friend?
Never ask a pregnant woman how she feels at 5AM
Homicide doesn't wet the appetite on a first date
Teenage couples don't share keys
Rent/Bury/Buy
There's nothing revolutionary about Violation of Trust. It's an early '90s TV movie with familiar faces and a melodramatic murder mystery. It scratched my itch exactly as I'd hoped. Bless you, Tubi.
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