Whispers & Lies (2008) Melissa Joan Hart, Susan Hogan
Intrepid high school teacher must survive an island full of vampires ... of science!
Lifetime spoilered this one big time by having a goth chick in the previews replying to Melissa Joan Hart/Jill’s query: “So … you’ve been a teenager …” “For a hundred and forty five years!”
Jill accompanies her cousin Patti to spend a week on a vacation island in New England with a handsome intriguing guy (Kevin) Patti met at the beach. The same night they arrive, Patti is attacked and injured by a mugger, and Kevin takes her off to get stitches. We see her with the doctor (Faye Croft), who notices a birthmark she has, and asks her if she knows what it means. It turns out, it’s a very specific kind of mark associated with a rare blood condition that confers extreme immunity to disease on its possessor.
Patti never returns to her vacation cabin, and Jill spends the next few days harassing the sheriff to do something and looking for Kevin and flirting with this cute artist guy Chris and reading about other dead tourists at the library and whatnot. Meanwhile, we learn that Jill has the same birthmark! Everywhere she goes, rushing hither and yon about the town in her ineffectual investigation, there are people standing around coughing and eyeballing her like she’s a big juicy steak, while you the viewer, having seen the preview, are sitting there thinking, Duh, Jill, everyone on the island has conspired to kill Patti so they can inject themselves with her blood and go on being immortal, it’s so OBVIOUS, what is wrong with you? And also, why aren’t they killing you yet instead of letting you run around annoying everyone, and why does the 145-year old teenager still totally act like a teenager?
These questions remain unanswered, but finally, Patti turns up dead, and the sheriff tells Jill she has drowned. JIll’s cute romantic interest has a bad cough too, and he redoubles his efforts to get her to leave the island, but she keeps having all these reasons why she can’t go yet. She does at least figure out a way to get into the morgue and check to make sure that her cousin didn’t drown (she’s a high school science teacher so of course she knows forensics) and to try to check Patti's blood, whereupon she discovers Patti doesn't have any anymore. At long last, Jill makes the connection between Patti's death and the very long line at the health clinic for people getting "flu shots" earlier that day, and the lightbulb goes on. She agrees to get out of Dodge with the sulky rebellious ancient teenage goth girl and Chris on his boat.
They’re stopped at the harbor by a mob of islanders, led by Dr. Croft! Jill points out that the injections don’t seem to be working as well as they used to, and that they’ve been having to kill people more and more often and yet many of the islanders are still deteriorating physically, and so they should just give up on the whole thing and let her go. So they do! While acting like it’s all Dr. Faye’s fault or something, keeping them imperfectly alive all those years when they could have gone and died in jail a long, long time ago. Well some people always think it’s all about them, don’t they Ms. Mad Scientist?
Lifetime rating: **
