User Reviews

An excellent film showing a mild-mannered 47 year old man lured into an internet affair with supposedly a young girl.

This is a guy who basically can't accept that the years are going by and he is getting older.

Laura Giacomo, as his homely wife, and a loyal co-provider to their children, gives a wonderful performance.

Though he never meets the girl, their computer affair alters his personality and creates a tremendous obsession with her. A fellow worker is dating the girl and tragic consequences result in this true story.

By the end, you know that there a lot of people who lie on the internet while promoting themselves. In this case, tragic consequences resulted.

Anyone notice that the cop who pulled our guy in is the same gentleman who plays the mentor to our young cop Jamie in the hit-series "Blue Bloods?"

So, I'm not a Lifetime fan, but my roommates are so I was subjected to a large range of Lifetime movies to watch this past weekend and it was...horrible. But, out of all the movies I watched, this one was the least cringe-worthy. Don't get me wrong, I still cringed the entire movie, but since this is based on a true story, they actually had something fairly decent to write about.

So, the movie begins by emphasizing the normal average life of almost-50 year old, Thomas Montgomery. We see his factory job, his two little girls who he loves so much, and his loving but hard- working wife who is a nurse. During this introduction, we also see the awkwardness between both the actors and the characters. There's so much awkwardness it's unreal actually. I don't even know if it's real or not because everything is that uncomfortable. It gets worse when we see them attempt sex and flop awkwardly back onto the bed, looking at the ceiling unsatisfied. I know your supposed to show that Thomas is not happy with his life, but Jesus!

Then we learn that Thomas and his friends have poker night and even though his wife, who obviously needs a break too, turned down her night with the girls to let him go. So, Thomas goes and plays poker and finds out that his friends play poker online, so he goes and gets involved at home. That's when he meets Tallhotblond, a sixteen year old girl, who piques his interest. Pretty nasty, right? Oh it gets worse. Long story short. Thomas starts becoming obsessed, not with poker, but with Tallhotblond. He talks to her every night, sends her pictures of his younger self, and even goes against his wife and leaves her high and dry to sleep alone. Once she questions him about using the computer so much, he decides to use the money they don't have to buy himself a laptop, just so he can chat with Tallhotblond whenever he wants.

The story becomes even more insane when you see Thomas creating a younger version of himself and pretending he's that young boy in the army again. He imagines that he's full of strength, rich, and good- looking. He works out more and even imagines he and Tallhotblond in a sexual relationship. They actually had sexual chats during the movie where you watched him (Cringe Moment) masturbate to her texts, imagining her voice in his ear. It gets even worse when she sends him "care packages" that includes a personal letter and panties, where he runs into the woods to smell them and rub them on his face. And because he's so full of love and emotion, he buys a phone with money they don't have, and goes to propose to Tallhotblond in their family bathroom. It's all so bad, you wonder how it even carried on for this long. (I'm just going to say it, this movie gets worse as time goes on. It's so wrong that I can't even come up with words to express how worse it gets.)

Now we get towards the middle of the movie, yes that was all in the beginning, where FINALLY, the wife notices something. After all the signs and the constant advice from her co-worker (smartest person in the movie), she enters his computer and finds all his goodies that he saved, even the messages he exchanged with Tallhotblond. And she does like any distraught wife does, she cries. She looks at him and watches as he acts like a totally normal father, but knows it's all true when he says he's going to "go on for some computer time." The next day, when Thomas and the kids arrive, she confronts him and doesn't even think about the fact that the kids shouldn't be listening to this. So she punishes him to the couch in the garage and guess what? She also mailed Tallhotblond their family pictures and explained to her who Thomas really was. Thomas gets mad and explains to Tallhotblond how much he loves her, but it's all a waste after he finds out she's talking to his friend/ co-worker who played poker with him.

Now I'm not going to spoil the ending and the "twist" because it'd just be a waste. All I have to say is, this movie was so over the top and outrageous that you kinda can't believe it's true. But it is. I read up on the actual story and the movie follows closely to it. It's just as stupid. I feel like I didn't enjoy the movie because of the bad acting, the rushing plot-line, and the events and how they took place. Thomas was such an unlikable guy and even his wife, who's supposed to be the victim, is unlikable in the sense that she let this carry on for this long. And you knew she knew what was going on because she's too close to him and she questioned him too much. She was just too blind and didn't address it beforehand.

I hate the review is long but the nonsense had to be said. If you like romance/murder movies (about half of Lifetime), then this movie is for you. I'm biased in the fact that I just don't care for the channel at all, but even then, I probably wouldn't have liked it if it was shown on another channel. So, watch if you want but I wouldn't recommend if you're looking for a decent gripping movie about a romance gone wrong.

How in good conscience, can the makers of this film NOT focus on the ridiculousness of the situation. A woman pretends to be something she's not, like most women have to do so they don't trigger violence in these sociopathic nut bags, and the film makers make her out to be as much a criminal as the nut bag. Racism, sexism, all seem to play a part and so many disregard the complete lunacy the people display. My general guess is that because the guy is of the dominant culture in a racially dysfunctional society, we need to explain why he's a nut bag because he was caught, and why the person who 'forced' him to commit the crime is a nut bag. Not to say that other cultures don't have the same insecure nut bags, but the 'institution' protects these particular types of terrorists. Well done documentary, with a twisted emphasis.

As this is a true story, I don't understand why many don't seem to take it seriously. A young man is dead. Dead. His life was ended over a fake relationship over the internet. I don't see any humor in this movie or anything to laugh about, only sadness. A young man lost his life, kids lost their father, and a wife lost her sense of security along with a husband. All this over Katie, a girl that actually existed, but her mother pretended to be over the internet. Obviously Thomas is the major one to take the blame in this story, how could such a normal man become such a freak? I also think that the mother of the real Katie should have gotten some trouble, at least a little something because without her trying to trick people by pretending to be her daughter, none of this would have gotten started. The movie was well played, but the network needs to remember that this is Lifetime, and that in a Lifetime movie many viewers do not appreciate Masturbation scenes. The movies on this network are getting quite gratuitous.

Thomas (Garret Dillahunt) works at a Michigan factory. He is approaching 50 and is an ex-Marine. He was a wife (Laura San Giacomo) and two children. He has trouble performing his male duties. The guys turn him on to Internet poker where he meets "talhotblond" a high school teenager (Ashley Hinshaw) who comes on to Thomas. He lies to her and falls in love with a girl he has never meet. She also flirts with Brian (Brando Eaton) a co-worker who is a player. From here on out, the plot is easy to figure out, especially with the teaser/spoiler opening scene.

This film, based on a true story, is better than "Catfish." It is a true life dark comedy.

Parental Guide: No f-bombs or nudity. Near Sex.