The Haunting
Kate Nolan (Emma Caulfield - The Reality of Love) never had anything to do with her father after he abandoned her and her mother when she was just a child. It is why she is surprised when his attorney, Carl Brookes (Mackenzie Gray - Christmas Truce), shows up and informs her that her father has died but she is his sole beneficiary of his estate which alongside an $11 million fortune also includes a house he had been working on especially with Kate in mind. But Kate has also inherited her mother's clairvoyant ability and through a series of scary visions believes the house was the home to a series of unsolved murders involving the nearby lake. With her mum having helped the police they agree to investigate but in doing so put Kate and her daughter in danger as the killer seeks to silence them, but is the killer the only one.
There is actually a heck of a lot more which goes on in "In Her Mother's Footsteps", which is also known as "Deadly Inheritance", as there are those seeking to steal Kate's new found fortune to the horrifying visions she has about a man in a black hood as well as the fact she spent some time in a psychatric facility. All of these elements combine to create what ends up a multi layered thriller which on the simplest level combines the classic storylines of a woman being driven to madness with a mystery surrounding unsolved murders in an old house.
What may surprise you is that "In Her Mother's Footsteps" is in fact a made for TV movie as it manages to cope with all the different story levels with out doing any of them a disservice. Okay so there is still something about the movie which makes you think it wouldn't have worked on the big screen but the production level, the various spooky goings on and so on all are a notch above what you usually get from a movie which was shown on the Lifetime Movie Network.
Part of the reason why "In Her Mother's Footsteps" ends up more effective is that the storyline doesn't throw everything at you within the first 30 minutes. Instead the storyline slowly grows and evolves so whilst we start with Kate having a nightmare it isn't till further down the line we realise these are visions. Then we learn that she spent time in a mental institution due to this and then after a bit more time we learn her mother had the same ability. It simply means that you can't predict where the movie is going other than some inevitable danger for Kate. On the subject of which Emma Caulfield does a nice job of getting in to her part and making her intriguing due to the way her personality flips from fine to frightened in a blink of an eye.
What this all boils down to is that "In Her Mother's Footsteps" is a much better movie than I had expected it to be and is certainly not the predictable made for TV thriller which most of these movies are.
