A Sister's Secret (2009) Alexandra Paul, Cynthia Preston, Paul Whitney, Deborah Grover, Ron Gabriel, Philip Craig, Cinthia Burke Movie Review

A Sister's Secret (2009)   2/52/52/52/52/5


Cynthia Preston in A Sister's Secret (2009)

Not Much of a Secret

With their paper mill business back in Granson, Pennsylvania in trouble, Katherine (Alexandra Paul - Gospel of Deceit) returns to her home town with a plan to restructure the business in the hope of saving it. But returning back to Granson comes with out its share of problems as Jane (Cynthia Preston - A Woman's Rage); the sister of Katherine's former boyfriend Sean, still blames her for his suicide and is determined to make her pay one way or another.

When ever it comes to TV movies I tend to be quite forgiving, I never expect great production values, fancy direction, original ideas or great characters but even when making allowances some TV movies just don't work. And that brings me to "A Sister's Secret" a TV movie which wants to be a thriller but really isn't and sadly that is not the worse thing about it either because the acting is poor and so is the writing. To put it bluntly "A Sister's Secret" is bad even by made for TV movie standards.

Alexandra Paul and Paul Whitney in A Sister's Secret (2009)

The one thing which isn't bad about "A Sister's Secret" is the basic idea as whilst not overly original the set-up of a sister wanting revenge for the death of her brother has possibilities and potential. And there are times when those possibilities present themselves, it may be text book but the fact Jane keeps her brother's room as a shrine to him is good as is the fact that her mother is as bitter as she is. But then you get the absurd form of revenge, the sabotage of Katherine's plan to save the paper mill via restructuring the business, which really doesn't make sense.

Then to be honest a lot of what happens in "A Sister's Secret" ends up not making sense, from staging a fake break-in to using computer equipment during the break in to send an email it is wrong on so many levels. And so the longer this goes on with Jane becoming more and more obsessed with ruining Katherine's plans the more laughable it gets until we get to the big ending where inevitably everything boils over. In all honesty everything you see in "A Sister's Secret" you can see done better in a lot of other TV movies let alone those on the big screen.

But it does get worse because the acting from everyone is so forced that at times it feels unbelievable. Characters end up speaking in such an unnatural way; saying things normal people don't say and over emphasizing stuff so it becomes cheesy. It doesn't help that whenever Jane is meant to be having some evil thoughts the camera focuses on Cynthia Preston's face and rather than looking nefarious it looks cartoon bad guy-ish.

What this all boils down to is that basically "A Sister's Secret" is not only a text book thriller but it is a bad text book thriller. Never once is it thrilling and more often than not it is laughable as we have over acting and unrealistic dialogue which when combined is terrible.


LATEST REVIEWS