Seemingly Perfect Family 2026 * 1/2 Stars

IMPERFECT MURDER

"Why should we trust an 18-year-old with this position?" Um, why the heck should I the 18-year-old trust you you crazy loon?

Anyway Seemingly Perfect Family is my latest review. It's a Netflix flick that doesn't have a whole lot of buildup and/or mounting. I mean from the get-go you know who the evildoer is and you know the damsel in distress is all but locked up in some underground room (compulsory flash-forward alert). "Family is the most important thing." Uh yeah, whatevs. 

Filmed in and around Atlanta, GA and sort of free of cinematic red herrings, "Perfect Family" is about a young woman coming from a foster home to be a nanny to a well-off couple who seem unhinged right off the bat. There's the interview, there's the hire, there's the adoptive baby, there's the conflict, and finally there's the tumult. Rinse, repeat, reuse. Natch. 

With Seemingly Perfect Family, you have a few tense moments but there's also a lack of apprehension and a total lack of savoir-faire. Could it be that the acting is pretty much mediocre? Maybe. I mean Violet SinClair is no Audrey Hepburn. Could it be the fact that the film readily veers into camp? Possibly and that's saying something considering it's a product of good old Lifetime. And uh, could it be that director Lisa France apes stuff like Deadly Mile High Club and Girl in the Basement only to lack the nasty misgivings of those latter pics? Bingo bango give the soul a cookie. 

Starring Rylee Reagan, Bourke Floyd, Anna Morgan Neugent, and SinClair (see last paragraph), "Perfect Family" rounds out to your standard 90-minute running time (sans ads). The vehicle is rather uncharitable and unsuspecting so it's real easy to identify who the adversaries are as well as the central characters. Disposable to the nth degree, it's basically the "hand that botched the cradle."  

Written by Jesse Burleson