Reviewing a Pair of Villainesses from "Picture Perfect Lies"

After a very thrilling wave of true crime films, Lifetime returned to the usual thrillers with this film, Picture Perfect Lies, which centered on Rachel Collins, who was celebrating her 16th birthday with her parents, Angela and Spencer Collins. Among the people celebrating along with the family is Rachel's aunt, Jenny Burkett, who is shown displaying a downtrodden demeanor, but sadly, the party ends on a tragic note, as Jenny is found in the pool...deceased.

Oddly, Rachel doesn't really receive any concrete answers from her parents regarding Jenny's death, with Angela only stating that Jenny had been depressed because the party reminded her of her daughter, who died at the age of four. Rachel wanted more answers, and it led her and her friend, Ava, to Jenny's house, where a hooded figure entered and tracked them. Ava was attacked, though Rachel scared off the assailant with a pocket knife. She later found a photo of Jenny's daughter, and was surprised to see a mole that was similar to hers, leading Rachel to realize that the little girl was her.

Rachel confronted her parents and demanded the truth, with Angela revealing that Jenny was Rachel's actual birth mother, claiming that Jenny gave birth to her as a teenager, but gave her to Angela and Spencer because she wasn't ready for motherhood. Even with that revelation, Rachel was left upset at her parents for the continued deception, and vented to Ava (who survived and was released from the hospital) about how much she had been lied to. Rachel decided to look further into Jenny's past, doing so with her boyfriend, Adam, but their drive to meet Jenny's high school boyfriend saw them being tracked.

The climax saw the pair learn a surprise truth: not only was Rachel not Angela and Spencer's daughter, she wasn't Jenny's, either. An online search revealed that Rachel was actually Rebecca Tomlinson, the daughter of Marcy and Ryan Tomlinson, who had went missing when she was four years of age. The couple were later assaulted by a pair of hooded figures, but afterwards, Adam and Rachel found the Tomlinsons at the same park where the latter was taken, and after Rachel introduced herself to the couple as their daughter, an emotional reunion took place.

However, the reunion was interrupted by Angela, who removed her disguise and held the group at gunpoint, while ordering Rachel to get away from her birth parents. At this moment, Angela revealed everything; she and Spencer had been trying to have children but couldn't, and after being turned down by adoption agencies, the couple decided to abduct a child. The actual abduction was committed by Jenny, with Angela sending her sister to search for a child that resembled the Collinses, resulting in Jenny finding Rebecca and abducting her. Regarding Jenny's death, Angela killed her sister due to Jenny's guilt and plans to confess everything to the renamed Rachel, and she and Spencer had been tracking Rachel throughout her search, which included attacking Ava and Adam as well.

Spencer later arrived and tackled Adam, but Angela's attempt to kill Adam ended up backfiring when her gunshot killed her husband instead. In the end, Rebecca/Rachel was fully reunited with her real family, and she was on TV renaming a park after Jenny, while Angela watched from a mental hospital.

Angela Collins: This was another Lifetime film where I watched the trailer beforehand, and Reel One's trailer did give away Angela Collins as the main villainess, and because of this, I was really looking forward to this film so I could see Laurie Fortier's first true villainous role in a Lifetime film. It is not Fortier's first one overall, though; she was seen just months prior in Saving My Daughter as Rebecca Marshall, another kidnapper, though Rebecca redeemed herself and was bent on remaining on the straight and narrow. This was definitely not the case for Angela, as not only did she mastermind an abduction, but she resorted to various evil lengths to maintain her sinister secret, and among those lengths included murder.

Angela was very ruthless and deceitful in her path, and the climax showed that she cared very little about the amount of lives she had ruined in her villainous and desperate quest to become a mother. As always, Fortier portrayed Angela's deceitful and maniacal nature very well, and she played the role of an evil mastermind to perfection. Performances like this are why Fortier is always in Lifetime movies (this is her third in 2021, alone), and it's also why I've wanted her to play a truly diabolical villainess in such a film, because I knew good and well that she would excel. Fortier is set to appear in two more Lifetime films: Recipe for Abduction and Killer Grades.

Jenny Burkett: While Reel One's trailer gave away Laurie Fortier's villainous role, it kept Jenny Burkett's own villainy hidden, so Trailers Don't Spoil Everything. Even so, I did have a feeling that Jenny was evil due to who was playing her: Crystal Allen. Crystal Allen is no stranger to Lifetime fans; in 2017, she appeared as Beth Glynner in The Stalker Club, in 2019, she played Annie Weaver in Am I a Serial Killer?, and in 2020, she played Anna in Beware of Mom. All three characters were villainesses, so I figured that Allen would make it four in a row with this film. She did, but she was on her way to redemption.

Though Jenny was the actual abductor acting under her evil sister's orders, she had what was later revealed to be guilt and remorse over her actions and planned to come clean, leading to Angela killing Jenny. In Allen's brief scenes, we see her truly play out Jenny's emotions very well, and while it's a shame that we don't see flashbacks of Jenny's villainous side, the film does reveal that, in spite of her remorse and guilt, she was quite a deceptive villainess in her own right, but clearly not as evil as Angela.

Oh, and as Columbo would say, "One more thing." This is the second Lifetime film in a week that has centered on abduction; last week gave us Cradle Did Fall. After going back to my review on that film's pair of villainesses, I saw the similarities between Angela Collins and Cathy Driver, though as villainous as Angela was, Cathy was clearly worse. Both of them committed actions that can't be condoned, but at least Angela had the heartbreak of infertility. Cathy, however, committed her abductions solely based on her belief that she would be a better mother.

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Click here for Angela Collins' profile on Villainous Beauties Wiki, and click here for Jenny Burkett's profile!