Lifetime Review: 'Room For Murder'

Following a recent job offer falling through, recent college grad Kristen (Lorynn York) returns home to spend some time with her mother Moira (Tanya Clarke). But her homecoming comes with a surprise in the form of Jake (James Maslow), a tenant who was renting out Kristen's bedroom and Moira's lover. While unnerved by Jake's appearance at her house and the significant age difference between him and her mother, she attempts to get used to her new living arrangements and her mother's new love interest.

But soon, Kristen finds herself becoming increasingly unnerved by Jake and how little either she or Moira know of him. When a woman is found strangled to death, Kristen begins to suspect Jake was involved and begins working to uncover the truth, with the reluctant help of her estranged ex-boyfriend, local Sheriff Ryan (Adam Huber). As Jake's behavior becomes more alarming and Moira becomes more resistant to her daughter's attempts to warn her, Kristen will soon learn just how dark Jake's past really is—and may have to fight to save herself and her loved ones from a truly dangerous man.

Much like Killer Single Dad, Room For Murder (originally titled by MarVista Entertainment the vastly better Twisted Tenant) is the type of movie that lives or dies by the quality of its main villain. Thankfully, casting made the perfect decision in hiring James Maslow for that role. That might sound bizarre to anyone who only knows Maslow from the Nickelodeon sitcom about his former band. But after his appearance in Lifetime's Seeds of Yesterday (the conclusion to their Flowers in the Attic saga), Maslow proved himself to be far more capable than his most notable role might suggest. As Jake, Maslow exudes a level of darkness and malice that can send chills down a viewer's spine, while also giving off enough charm and charisma to where you can't really fault the characters too much when they fail to see what he truly is.

The rest of the cast is similarly solid, with Lifetime returnees Lorynn York and Adam Huber giving authentic performances as the loving daughter desperate to protect her mother from danger and the remorseful ex wanting to rekindle the relationship he ruined. Tanya Clarke, meanwhile, channels in Kaitlyn Black's Killer Single Dad performance by displaying realistic maternal fierceness in the climax right before learning the truth about Jake, and later gets a cathartic "You go, girl!" moment in the climax. In a surprising twist, Jenna Kanell's mostly secondary role of Kristen's friend MJ has a very great moment in which she fights off a murder attempt from Jake, almost serving as a meta nod from Lifetime to their tendency to kill off their main heroine's best friend.

Unfortunately, to get to Moira's more empowering moments, you have to slog through her spending much of the movie blindly defending Jake and ignoring Kristen's concerns about him, getting rather callous about it as the movie progresses (one moment in which Moira suggests Kristen should be on anti-depressants was particularly mean-spirited and out of character). A side character also has a "Too dumb to live" moment that (SPOILER ALERT) earns her the right of being the doomed best friend trope, laughing off Jake's verbal assault on a stranger at a laundromat after Jake gives the impossibly weak "I've just had a rough day" excuse (SPOILERS ENDED). It makes Moira (who is arguably the film's secondary protagonist) unsympathetic for much of the movie, and by the time she wisens up to Jake's true nature, it'll likely be too late for most viewers to undo the damage.

While Room For Murder is far from being a perfect movie, it's solid in the areas it gets right. The casting is strong, despite some flaws in terms of character, and the film's pacing allows for a tense movie with a satisfying climax. My recommendation for Room For Murder can be summed up in one sentence: come for James Maslow; stay for him killing it (no pun intended) as a psycho killer.

Score: 6.5 out of 10 badass best friends.