The 2007 Cherokee County scandal takes a rather familiar tale twist in ‘Gaslit by My Husband: The Morgan Metzer Story, and its director Lee Gabiana does a commendable job bringing it to life. The woman in the eyes of the audience is Morgan it looks like an average housewife. Life’s obstacles, however, can be rather detrimental; and as she attempts to put all the pieces back together again, her husband only seems to be increasingly in danger. What are the chances that Morgan will be able to overcome all this and start anew? The answers await.
The movie begins when people are busy counting down to New Year and Morgan seems to drift out of consciousness. After explosions ring outside she slowly begins to stir and returns to sleep. She is nervous being in an empty room and inspects the cabinet for the gun she now knows is locked up. We witness a violation being perpetrated as someone enters the house; he bludgeons Morgan with a gun, then grabs her wrists, and restrains her behind her back. After this sequence, we fast forward to the time when Morgan is in a hospital bed preparing to welcome a boy whom she decides to name Kevin.
Kevin happens to be a heart baby after being born prematurely. Due to this condition, the doctors immediately push Kevin out of Morgan as soon as they can. His survival looks quite bleak. There’s bad news coming shortly. With Kevin’s lifeless body in her arms, Morgan mournfully sings a song to him. Her husband, Rodney, comforts her as she cries. They attempt to move past Kevin, but because Morgan has lost a baby, her first ever baby she seems to be in a very miserable state and refuses to budge from that position.
In One of Kevin’s Birthday Parties, What really Transpires?
Morgan has come to believe, as she puts it to Rodney, that the only way to deal with the trauma of her son’s death is to continue attempting to conceive. They have two gorgeous children together and for eight harmonious years, the couple is happy together. Each year on Kevin’s birthday, his parents throw him a birthday party close to family and friends so that he will always remain in their thoughts. But this doesn’t happen for a long time, and soon Morgan gets carried away by her conviction.
One day, when Morgan is at her meetings, during one of the breaks, she expresses her dissatisfaction with the fact that Kevin is not remembered with much fondness by Rodney. There she meets a guy, Griffith. Please, he has only recently lost his wife and she is doing her best to comfort this man. When Morgan brings the children home, the children are not home because she forgets to go to collect them from school and Rodney has to leave the office early, causing him to get fired. This seems like no big deal for Rodney as he has been able to make good returns on his stocks and their family’s future is secure.
On the day of Kevin’s birthday, so Rodney tells one of his friends that he thought Morgan would forget about Kevin. However, later he learns that she has been taking these medicines because of which she has become paranoid over the death of Kevin. Later when Rodney goes to help Morgan with the cake, she all of a sudden becomes very defensive over Kevin’s cake which is strange for all… When Morgan eventually turns on Rodney, for some reason, she slaps him and then apologizes for being rude. Nicole, a stranger to these people, sees the whole story. She tries to speak with Morgan but she hurries up to her room after all.
When inflation takes a toll, Morgan discovers that Rodney has literally gone broke. As of now, he is nearly doing everything. A little while later, Morgan, being an enthusiastic interior designer, chooses to set up her own farm and recruits Nicole since she shares the same passion. In due course of time, as Morgan’s company becomes successful, she earns more than Rodney and assists other household employees as well. All this makes Rodney very disappointed. He later moves on to concentrate on his carpentry endeavors and takes on loans from the bank.
Morgan discovers unchecked charges on her credit card one day, particularly on one she wasn’t even aware she had. In response to this, when Morgan asks Rodney what is going on, he initially claims that he required the funds in order for his carpentry effort. When Morgan points out how much money Rodney has spent on helping him with entertaining activities, he suddenly gets angry and claims he is in self-defense. A little squabble follows amongst the pair. Shortly thereafter, Morgan glimpses herself tumbling down the stairs. Once she has opened her eyes, she is treated to Rodney yelling at her for throwing him down the staircase. Then everyone gets jumbled, and the next morning, Morgan’s parents come and accost her for being rude towards her husband, Rodney.
Rodney’s jealousy makes him feel that Morgan is cheating on him. He threatens Morgan with a letter and email from Griffith saying that he has to leave her. In her meeting with Griffith, Morgan tries to reason with him, but Griffith refuses to ever contact Rodney despite Morgan’s efforts. Morgan comes to the conclusion that Rodney is just making all these false accusations up himself. Nonetheless, she can’t grasp the idea of why he is doing so. For Morgan, it is becoming tougher to stay with Rodney as she discovers steroids one night. He denies taking them. Morgan is even forced into sex by Rodney and the entire act of intrusion results in sexual violation.
Morgan is very sorry for her expectant behavior towards Rodney on two occasions: the first instance is during the birthday party of Kevin when Morgan slaps Rodney, the second instance is when she pushes him down the stairs. What is however surprising is that, Nicole does on one occasion help her clarify the misconceptions she has about herself. On Kevin’s birthday, Nicole spends the day providing videos of herself walking around the house while she admires the decor. Soon, she resorts to Rodney and Morgan who are fighting over something, she goes over to check it out and in the process, she records the action by coincidence.
Nicole demonstrates to Morgan a video in which it can be clearly seen that it is Rodney who first hits her and then says something to her. This in fact gives proof that, first, Morgan was pushed by Rodney from the stairs and afterwards he also jumped down so as to make it appear that she had done everything. She even tolerated this within herself when she saw her most expensive bag which she had bought for herself being urinated on. She loses her temper because this event has been the final straw and she attacks Rodney. Even her sons would come to her aid in this fight between the two parents. Later on, Morgan makes up her mind to get rid of Rodney. Rodney takes out the gun to restrain them, however Morgan walks past him regardless.
Time has passed and Rodney has been quite the gentleman. It’s as if he has resigned to being a pretty decent human being. According to the interview, the children go on visitation with Rodney sometimes and that makes Morgan happy as he is not all bad. Morgan has the children with her living elsewhere while Nicole possesses most of the time with her. Then, one day, Rodney displays Morgan\’s medical reports and she realized Rodney is suffering from cancer. He tries to use that information to abuse and spend the night with Morgan. But nothing happened that night. The first thing that Rodney does in the morning is to get out of the house. The second thing is to bring up whether he would be able to overcome the cancer and if they could make a new beginning. Morgan, on the other hand, has made it obvious that while she is happy to be Mr Mcintosh\’s friend she can never remain Mr Mcintosh’s woman.
The last midnight of the year is very heavy for some, for example, Morgan who had been left alone on that day. She had already decided in her mind that she will keep the gun close to her. The gun that Rodney had given to her earlier, albeit under a false pretext of having an emergency meeting. But Morgan later discovers that Rodney is just out playing golf. Anyway, shortly after, Morgan is attacked by a man wearing a mask and Morgan quickly recognizes the eyes. This is the same Rodney who had tied her up and raped her previously.
Not long after, the unfamiliar man leaves and Rodney comes into view and seems to feel that his appearance is very much needed and has redeemed Morgan. Rodney dials the police but as the officers arrive at the scene, Morgan was in a position to whisper to an officer that it was Rodney who had attacked her. Now, the police want to know why Rodney expected there to be a need to protect Morgan. Not providing a proper explanation, the police, accuse Rodney of entering the premises without consent and physical violence.
By the end of the movie, Rodney confesses to his wrongdoings and expresses regret for the way he treated Morgan while they were together. Morgan is put on the stand and she thanks Rodney for giving her lovely children with the assurance that they will never meet him again. She further clarifies that if at all a person loves another, they will not tie their partner’s hands and will not beat them with a gun to the extent of hurting them on the face.
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