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When she entered her high school’s talent competition, 17-year-old aspiring singer Mia Rodson (Taylor Castro) never imagined that she would win and thus earn a chance of a lifetime: working under the tutelage of prominent music producer Fasa (Miguel Fasa). But while the news thrills Mia and her doting mother Grace (Christy Carlson Romano), it hits fellow competitor and Mia’s best friend Lindsay Oakens (Gail Soltys) and her aggressively controlling mother Ellen (Jacy King) like a ton of bricks.
As Mia is taken under Fasa’s wing and finds her music career skyrocketing, Ellen becomes hellbent on destroying her and Grace, believing Mia stole her daughter’s chance at success from her. But in the midst of dealing with the Oakens’ acts of sabotage, Grace finds herself becoming further disconnected from Mia as her daughter’s newfound fame starts getting to her head. When all the drama comes to a head in a shocking act of violence that Mia is accused of committing, can Grace save her daughter and bring the true culprit to justice?
Being the latest entry in Concord Films’ “Killer” series as directed by Barbie Castro, Dream Killer marks a first for the series: it’s the first film of the series where Castro stays behind the camera. In an ironic twist, her daughter Taylor (who starred alongside her mother as fictional mother/daughter duos in Girlfriend and Marriage Killer) takes over the mantle as the film’s main protagonist while a fresh face to the series–Christy Carlson Romano–plays her onscreen mother. Additionally, teamed up with Castro again as a writer is Doug Campbell, a familiar face among Lifetime movie fans who previously co-wrote Marriage Killer alongside Castro.
But despite coming from the same team behind the previous entries in this strong saga, Dream Killer never feels steady when it comes to its plot. The aforementioned act of violence that you’d think would serve as the main plot catalyst instead gets shafted for much of the movie, getting eluded to in the very opening before being forgotten about until the final twenty minutes of the film. Instead, much of the film’s conflict revolves around Mia’s fame getting to her head and causing her to alienate herself from her mother and boyfriend, while Grace deals with retaliation from Ellen. While this plot isn’t necessarily boring, it comes with the feeling that it could’ve been condensed to the first half of the movie, with the second revolving around Grace’s efforts at proving Mia’s innocence.
Another major pitfall for Dream Killer has to do with Mia Rodson herself–more specifically, her character arc throughout the film. While Mia starts the film out as a compassionate and level-headed girl (most heartwarmingly in regards to her friendship with the troubled Lindsay), her transformation into a bratty pop diva almost the second her career with Fasa starts taking off is incredibly abrupt and leaves Mia as an almost thoroughly unsympathetic heroine. Taylor Castro gives a good performance and shines in Mia’s more vulnerable moments, but as a whole, Mia spends far too much of the movie throwing tantrums and casually disrespecting her mother to be a consistently likable lead.
Thankfully, no other character in the film comes close to matching Mia in terms of Unintentionally Unsympathetic-ness. Christy Carlson Romano is consistently likable and fierce as a mother trying to shield an often ungrateful daughter from the perils of fame, and Jacy King is a force of nature as domineering stage mom Ellen. A surprise gem of the cast emerges in the form of Gail Soltys, who brings aching authenticity to Lindsay as we witness Ellen’s mistreatment of her daughter and the effects it has on Lindsay. The only disappointing factor about Lindsay is the fact that her character arc ends on an incomplete note, never allowing her a moment of truly standing up to her mother’s emotional abuse.
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