Villainess Review: Mandy (Saving My Daughter)

Normally, in my villainess reviews, I usually detail the events of the film or television program that eventually lead to the villainess being unveiled on screen. However, I'm going to do something different here because my usual approach is similar to a movie review as well, and there's already a review of this movie up on Vocal written by someone who I consider as the "Wayne Gretzky of movie reviews" (it's Stanley Cup Playoff time, hence the Great One reference). So with that, I'll just cut to the chase and state that this story and review is about Mandy, the main villainess of 2021's Saving My Daughter.

When we first see Mandy, she's introduced as the best friend of Joanna Kennedy, as well as the mother of Kyle--who is friends with Joanna's daughter, Chloe. In her first scene, we see Mandy cover up a bruise on her arm, which gives the indication that she is in an abusive marriage to her second husband, Craig. It goes from indication to cold hard fact quickly, as we see Craig berate Mandy and later bully Kyle as well, and the Kennedys also know about Mandy's situation.

Things take a sinister turn when Chloe visits Kyle's house and finds Craig dead, and then, Chloe suddenly turns up missing. Mandy offers assistance in Joanna's search, which saw Joanna suspect that Brittany Maxwell, a recently released convict who abducted Chloe when she was an infant, was behind the current abduction. However, as the film went on to reveal, Chloe's abductor was none other than Mandy herself, and it was done to cover up the fact that she killed Craig after he threatened to harm Kyle. Though the murder was in self-defense, Mandy feared that she wouldn't be believed due to a revelation that she dropped domestic violence charges against Craig in the past, so after Chloe entered, Mandy forced Chloe to help move Craig's body, and then abducted her and held her captive in a cabin to keep her secret hidden.

Mandy thwarted Chloe's attempt to escape, though Joanna and Kyle ended up figuring out that Chloe was at the aforementioned cabin and headed there, only to find Mandy, who later unleashed her gun and revealed everything. In addition to her confession, Mandy claimed that she was protecting Chloe from being charged as an accessory, though Chloe escaped and snuck up from behind Mandy, with the distraction allowing Joanna to tackle her former friend and wrestle for the gun, which went off and shot Mandy. Mandy survived, and she ended up arrested.

Ashley Jones played Mandy in this film; she is a known household name in Lifetime films, though she hasn't played the villainess role a lot. Though Jones has played villainous roles on The Mentalist, CSI, CSI: Cyber, and the recently cancelled All Rise, 2019's Homekilling Queen served as Jones' lone heel Lifetime movie role until this film, as she played the scheming Connie Manning in that film. Regarding Mandy, she was quite a complex villainess, and that is an understatement. A rule that I strictly abide by on my site honoring villainesses, Villainous Beauties Wiki, is that if a villainess has a Freudian Excuse (a tragic backstory that leads to her villainy), then she should be posted as a blog and not an actual article. Mandy had that in spades with her situation; she was in an abusive marriage that showed no signs of truly ending, and even her murderous actions towards Craig were done in self-defense. However, it was after killing Craig that Mandy fully turned heel, as she resorted to abducting Chloe to hide her actions.

In this regard, Mandy's desperation turned her into a deranged villainess who was willing to murder once again to cover up her actions, as she showed that she would resort to killing her best friend in front of her own son. By Chloe's own admission in the final scenes, Mandy's willingness to harm both Chloe and Joanna showed that her heel persona had consumed her and she was beyond help at that point. Jones portrayed all of Mandy's complex emotions very well; she acted out Mandy's geniality very well in the early scenes, her reveal saw Jones portray her ruthless and sinister nature to perfection, though we also see that same emotion due to the fact that Mandy was a second-mother figure to Chloe. Finally, Jones' portrayal in the climax was stellar, as she truly acted out Mandy's desperation and mental unraveling in spectacular fashion.

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Click here for Mandy's profile on Villainous Beauties Wiki!