"Girlfriend Killer" was written by Christine Conradt but a disappointment coming from her because she utterly failed to bring any sort of multidimensionality to her villain (the usual aspect that raises Conradt's scripts above the Lifetime norm). The real auteur of this one is neither Conradt nor the traffic cop — oops, I mean director — Alyn Darnay, but Barbie Castro, who not only starred as the usual Lifetime damsel in distress but co-produced the film with Eric R. Castro (presumably her husband) and cast her daughter Taylor Castro as her character's daughter in the movie (well, that's one way to avoid the bugbear of having two people in a movie who don't look at all alike passed off as genetic relatives: cast a real mother and daughter as the mother and daughter in the film) and also hired one Rhys Castro as the propmaker — there are more Castros in this movie than there ever were in the Cuban government! Barbie Castro has done at least three similarly titled series films for Lifetime before, "Assumed Killer," "Patient Killer" and "Boyfriend Killer," which was also written by Christine Conradt and directed by Alyn Darnay, but I said of it that "this time (Conradt) seems merely to be following her formulae instead of legitimately extending them the way she did in 'The Bride He Bought Online,'" and the same could be said of "Girlfriend Killer" as well.
"Girlfriend Killer" does have its points, including the off-beat profession Conradt thought up for her heroine, the Barbie Castro role. She's a divorcée named Carmen Ruiz with a teenage daughter named Ayla (Taylor Castro) and a boyfriend named Ryan Gerner (Brian Gross). Carmen has created a business for herself that is a combination consultant and videographer for men seeking to make marriage proposals to their significant others (and not just women: one of the most delightful scenes in the film is one in which Carmen stages the proposal of a Gay man to his partner! I guess it's progress of a sort that we at last exist on Lifetime). She stages the date on which the guy will pop the question and uses a hidden camera and either a shotgun mike or mikes concealed in flowerpots and bushes (just like in the early days of sound film in the late 1920's!) to record the proposals, then presents the lucky man with an Internet link to download the video and collects her fee, while Ryan helps her as an editor and a grip. Only one of her customers, Emerson Banes (Jason Cook, who for once is not the hottest guy in the movie even though he's the villain — both Ryan and Carmen's ex Nick, played by Khotan Fernandez, are sexier!), isn't as lucky as the service advertises: he makes his proposal in Carmen's elaborate staging, but his girlfriend Marissa Stefans (Elisabetta Fantone) turns him down, saying that she's been seeing someone else for four months, he's someone Emerson doesn't know that she met at a "trade show," and they hit it off better than she and Emerson ever have. Emerson is your typical spoiled Lifetime 1-percenter; he drives a red Maserati sports car that practically becomes a character itself and his response to Marissa's turn-down is to knock her off.
"Girlfriend Killer" is a pretty typical Lifetime movie, neither especially good nor especially bad, decently done and with some nice-looking male cast members who for once aren't playing villains, but a bit of a disappointment from Christine Conradt because one thinks that, given her head instead of locked inside a Castro family vanity production, she could have made Emerson a genuinely interesting and multidimensional villain character instead of just a "stick" psycho.
"Girlfriend Killer" does have its points, including the off-beat profession Conradt thought up for her heroine, the Barbie Castro role. She's a divorcée named Carmen Ruiz with a teenage daughter named Ayla (Taylor Castro) and a boyfriend named Ryan Gerner (Brian Gross). Carmen has created a business for herself that is a combination consultant and videographer for men seeking to make marriage proposals to their significant others (and not just women: one of the most delightful scenes in the film is one in which Carmen stages the proposal of a Gay man to his partner! I guess it's progress of a sort that we at last exist on Lifetime). She stages the date on which the guy will pop the question and uses a hidden camera and either a shotgun mike or mikes concealed in flowerpots and bushes (just like in the early days of sound film in the late 1920's!) to record the proposals, then presents the lucky man with an Internet link to download the video and collects her fee, while Ryan helps her as an editor and a grip. Only one of her customers, Emerson Banes (Jason Cook, who for once is not the hottest guy in the movie even though he's the villain — both Ryan and Carmen's ex Nick, played by Khotan Fernandez, are sexier!), isn't as lucky as the service advertises: he makes his proposal in Carmen's elaborate staging, but his girlfriend Marissa Stefans (Elisabetta Fantone) turns him down, saying that she's been seeing someone else for four months, he's someone Emerson doesn't know that she met at a "trade show," and they hit it off better than she and Emerson ever have. Emerson is your typical spoiled Lifetime 1-percenter; he drives a red Maserati sports car that practically becomes a character itself and his response to Marissa's turn-down is to knock her off.
"Girlfriend Killer" is a pretty typical Lifetime movie, neither especially good nor especially bad, decently done and with some nice-looking male cast members who for once aren't playing villains, but a bit of a disappointment from Christine Conradt because one thinks that, given her head instead of locked inside a Castro family vanity production, she could have made Emerson a genuinely interesting and multidimensional villain character instead of just a "stick" psycho.