Another film that has me scratching my head and thinking "why do I bother watching made-for-TV movies?", this is a muddled, dull and clichéd affair which frequently lapses into moments of mind-crushing sentimentality for effect. Forget horror, as this film couldn't be horrific even if it tried. Instead it seems happy to wallow in plentiful dialogue between the six principle characters. A simple plot is stretched out to feature length largely by having the main plot points explained six or seven times; large stretches occupy the screen in which nothing much happens. There's a thrown in romantic aspect and a sex scene to go with it which could have been completely cut out of the film to no ill effect.
At first, with the set-up scenes at the beginning, this appears to be a thriller in the WHAT LIES BENEATH mould. It quickly degenerates into laughability with the arrival of the ghost, a teenage girl who does stupid things like walk in and out of the body of Thiessen (yes, it's that cheesy). From then on the film turns into a murder mystery, with Thiessen trying to work out what happened while her friends and family, initially thinking she's mad, eventually come around and try to help her. At various stages of the plot Thiessen becomes possessed by the girl and not at others, this is not explained. The film's unintentionally funniest moment comes at the end when the spirit of the dead girl possesses a HORSE in order to kill the murderer of her mother. It's that bad.
The acting is uninspired and flat, just like any TV movie. There's one exception: Tim Matheson, the stalwart TV veteran who makes the best of his role as the film's red herring. Tiffani-Amber Thiessen fails to make us, the viewer, believe in her at any point, and just doesn't have the acting skill or range to pull her performance off. The character of Melinda Culea, her mother, is so underwritten that she isn't even given a name! The identity of the murderer is pretty obvious about halfway through as well which dissolves the initially interesting murder-mystery aspect of the film. There isn't even any gore or violence - unless you count a silly dream sequence where Thiessen sees the ghost cut off her arm with a knife. Moments later, we see the ghost and Thiessen talking away happily again, with Thiessen apparently having just forgiven her! Forgettable and absurd, BURIED SECRETS may not quite be the worst movie ever, but it certainly gets close.
At first, with the set-up scenes at the beginning, this appears to be a thriller in the WHAT LIES BENEATH mould. It quickly degenerates into laughability with the arrival of the ghost, a teenage girl who does stupid things like walk in and out of the body of Thiessen (yes, it's that cheesy). From then on the film turns into a murder mystery, with Thiessen trying to work out what happened while her friends and family, initially thinking she's mad, eventually come around and try to help her. At various stages of the plot Thiessen becomes possessed by the girl and not at others, this is not explained. The film's unintentionally funniest moment comes at the end when the spirit of the dead girl possesses a HORSE in order to kill the murderer of her mother. It's that bad.
The acting is uninspired and flat, just like any TV movie. There's one exception: Tim Matheson, the stalwart TV veteran who makes the best of his role as the film's red herring. Tiffani-Amber Thiessen fails to make us, the viewer, believe in her at any point, and just doesn't have the acting skill or range to pull her performance off. The character of Melinda Culea, her mother, is so underwritten that she isn't even given a name! The identity of the murderer is pretty obvious about halfway through as well which dissolves the initially interesting murder-mystery aspect of the film. There isn't even any gore or violence - unless you count a silly dream sequence where Thiessen sees the ghost cut off her arm with a knife. Moments later, we see the ghost and Thiessen talking away happily again, with Thiessen apparently having just forgiven her! Forgettable and absurd, BURIED SECRETS may not quite be the worst movie ever, but it certainly gets close.