Lifetime Review: 'The Captive Nanny'

While professional nanny Chloe Reed (Karynn Moore) can't wait to start her own family, she finds her efforts to adopt not going as well as she hoped. In addition to her interview with an adoption agency ending on a sour note, she's shocked when her boyfriend Rob (Willie Mellina) suddenly expresses apprehension at the idea of starting a family, leading her to break up with Rob and move out. Wanting to move on while she continues to work towards adopting a child, Chloe looks for her next nanny job.

She finds it with the Brown family: Emily and Michael Brown (Austin Highsmith and Michael Aaron Milligan), and their 10-year-old son Tommy (Judah Abner Paul). Initially, Emily and Michael appear to be ideal employers, even with their fixation on security and strict rules for Chloe on how to care for Tommy. But soon after learning that Emily was previously the victim of a stalker, Chloe notices odd behavior on Emily's part and begins investigating the Browns. But when Emily and Michael become convinced Chloe is working for Emily's stalker, Chloe's new job becomes a nightmare she'll have to fight to escape.

Coming off the heels of The Au Pair Nightmare, The Captive Nanny appears nearly identical to the film that pre-dates its premiere by only ten days. Both are Lifetime thrillers about live-in nannies being hired by a security-obsessed but otherwise seemingly perfect couple, only to later learn dark secrets about them as their efforts to protect their child go from mildly overzealous to outright insane. Both films are also notable for being made by people new to the Lifetime scene: The Captive Nanny is director Amy S. Weber's first Lifetime film, and the film is a second Lifetime-esque feature for screenwriter Julian Broudy after the unofficial Lifetime film Twinsanity (released onto Netflix).

While coming out so soon after such a similar film might appear to be a grave error, The Captive Nanny doesn't suffer too much for its premiere date. While the film does struggle to escape The Au Pair Nightmare's shadow and doesn't reach the same levels as its rival film, The Captive Nanny has enough merit to carry itself under the weight of competition. Starting with its strengths, The Captive Nanny proves to be just as tense and suspenseful as its Joe Russo-directed counterpart. While the film takes much longer to get into the juicier moments of suspense than The Au Pair Nightmare and suffers from that somewhat sluggish pacing, its second half makes up for that by cranking up the tension as Chloe's simple nanny job becomes a fight for survival. And just like its rival film, The Captive Nanny's climax proves to be a wild ride that makes the slightly awkward pace worth waiting out.

Character writing, however, is where The Captive Nanny falls further below The Au Pair Nightmare. Our main heroine Chloe doesn't make the best first impression in her opening scenes, which see her dump her long-time boyfriend for the crime of not being as ready as she is to start taking care of a child (a decision which I'm not sure if the movie is trying to condone or discourage...) While Chloe thankfully avoids total derailment as the film goes on, other main players in The Captive Nanny's drama don't feel like they get the development they should. Most notably, because of their characters spending so little screentime together, we never see Chloe and Tommy develop much of a bond together. This proves to be a big mistake, as without Chloe developing a strong connection to Tommy, we're left wondering what reason Chloe could have for staying at the Brown residence, even as red flags begin flying the longer she's there. While it's not enough to make you lose too much sympathy for Chloe, it is enough to be annoying.

But despite some being stuck with underdeveloped characters to play, the cast proves fairly strong and bring their all to the material they're given. Making up for Chloe starting the movie on the wrong foot, Karynn Moore (previously seen on my review plate in My Daughter Was Stolen) brings a likability to Chloe as we see her drive to be a mother, matched by the drive she later employs in her efforts to escape from the Brown family's web. Though there are moments when Moore drops the ball when it comes to emoting (there are times when Chloe doesn't sound nearly as desperate and scared about her situation as she should be), Moore otherwise delivers as Chloe finds herself trapped and fearful that one wrong move could cost her dearly.

Fellow budding Lifetime regular Austin Highsmith proves to be the gem of the film as Emily Brown. In a departure from how Annie Heise played The Au Pair Nightmare's Allesandra Calebs, Highsmith initially plays Emily as a strict but friendly boss to Chloe, before the film's events cause her secret dark side to rise to the surface. Once that dark side comes into play, Highsmith truly shines in her first villainous Lifetime role, bringing an intense yet underplayed malice to Emily as we see her go from cordial boss to ruthless captor. SPOILER ALERT Emily reaches peak insanity once it becomes clear she's the one obsessed with Baz Martin (not the inverse, as she claimed), with Highsmith continuing her fiery performance as Emily truly goes off the deep end. We even get some unfortunately brief glimpses of a darker aspect of Emily's obsession, as we see how it outweighs whatever love she has for Michael (if there is any). There's even a few implications that appear to say that Emily doesn't even love Tommy either--instead only seeing him as a means of getting Baz back into her life. Spoilers Over

Of the movie's primary players, Michael Aaron Milligan is the most shafted by the script's half-baked characterizations, as Michael Brown is left a frustrating enigma when it comes to his motivation. Unlike The Au Pair Nightmare's John Caleb, we never get any distinct feel for Michael and how he fits into what is transpiring at the Brown household, and Milligan is left with little to work with in terms of his performance. Judah Abern Paul's Tommy isn't much better thanks in part to the aforementioned lack of a bond between Tommy and Chloe, though Paul is at least able to bring a handful of scenes to the table where we see how Tommy has been affected by living in such an unstable home.

The supporting cast also proves to be a mixed bag when it comes to character writing. While Chloe's friend Stephanie initially draws comparisons to the bland Kara from The Au Pair Nightmare, Ann Sonneville does what she can to bring spice to her otherwise flat "Heroine's BFF" character by playing Stephanie with a pinch of Genre Savvy. Willie Mellina does well at bringing charm to Chloe's estranged boyfriend Rob, and both Jason Skeen and Sam Howard (particularly the latter) bring a surprising amount of emotion to their very briefly-seen minor characters, with Howard's scenes being effectively heartbreaking.

While I may have compared The Captive Nanny to The Au Pair Nightmare a lot throughout this review, the film does do enough to allow it to stand on its own. While there's more than a few writing flubs and pacing issues that take it down a few notches in comparison to its predecessor, the strong second half and a cast that puts forth their best efforts in spite of the flawed script help The Captive Nanny bring enough entertaining drama and mayhem to make it worth recommending. Though if I were ever forced to choose between it and The Au Pair Nightmare, I'd certainly go with the latter.

Score: 7 out of 10 bobby pins.