Film / Stalked By My Mother

Gina (l) and Claire (r). Note: Despite the title, Claire is not stalking Gina, and Gina is not Claire's daughter. Confused yet?

Stalked by My Mother (also called Stalked by My Mom) is a 2016 Lifetime Movie of the Week Teen Drama Thriller, directed by Doug Campbell, who also wrote it.

17-year-old Maddy Beauregard (Mia Topalian) is trying to have an average Southern California teenage social life, but her extremely overprotective mother Claire (Jennifer Taylor) makes a habit of surreptitiously following her around, most recently to a party at a Whittendale College frat house that Maddy was invited to by her friend Gina West (Danielle C. Ryan, credited as Danielle Chuchran). Claire predictably freaks out when she catches Maddy flirting with 20-year-old frat boy Tucker (Spencer Neville) and threatens to kill him. After Maddy gets into a fight with Tucker at the frat house, Tucker is found dead the next day. All evidence seems to point to the innocent Maddy, who instead suspects that Claire did it. But a frightening long-ago incident in the lives of Maddy and Claire may be coming back to haunt them, and Gina might know a lot more about it than either of them suspect.

See also Stalked By My Doctor and Stalked By My Neighbor, which are also Lifetime movies directed by Doug Campbell, technically making this a Thematic Series (though, instead of stalking, the common threads are a Damsel in Distress and a villain with a Complexity Addiction).

Stalked by My Mother contains examples of:

• Action Girl: Gina proves to be quite adept at handling a gun, and also has a keen knowledge of explosives, and she wears a cool leather jacket.
• Aesop Amnesia: You would think the film's events would teach Claire a lesson about not being so overly protective of her daughter. But instead, after all is said and done, the movie ends with Claire following Maddy after she leaves for another party.
• The Alibi:
  • The police arrest Maddy for Tucker's murder, even though her dad can vouch for her that she was home the night of the killing, while Claire wasn't.
  • Gina's alibi is that she flew to New York the night of the murder, and she has the boarding passes to prove it. But she later admits that she immediately flew back to California under her real name, then flew back to New York after she killed Tucker.
• The Alcoholic:
  • Private Detective Nick Fox has bottles strewn around his house and takes random swigs while he's on the phone with Maddy.
  • Vanessa Underhill is a mess all these years after her husband killed himself, drinking and seemingly hallucinating when she talks to Claire.
• Auto Erotica: Maddy and Tucker try to initiate this after Maddy sneaks out. Claire tracks them down just as things begin to heat up.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Seemingly a Nice Girl at first, Gina turns out to be a vindictive psychopath.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Maddy's complaints about Claire following her around put her squarely into this territory.
• Complexity Addiction: This movie centers on a scheme that goes way beyond Batman Gambit into a veritable labyrinth of revenge tactics and manipulation put into motion by a skilled Chessmaster—Lucy Underhill, whose father committed suicide after being falsely accused of trying to kidnap Maddy when she was a child, takes on the alternate identity of Gina West just to befriend Maddy. She invites Maddy to a college party and sets her up with a frat boy, knowing that her mother Claire will disapprove. She also hires a stripper to show up to the party to entice Tucker, to make Maddy angrily jealous enough that she'll threaten Tucker. Going to the Beauregard house to apologize to Claire allows Lucy to sneak into Maddy's bedroom and steal her scissors. Then she sets up a flight to New York as Gina, but books an immediate return flight to L.A. as Lucy, goes to the frat house and kills Tucker with the scissors, and frames Maddy for the crime. She also retrieves the Beauregard family's bank statements from the trash and forces Claire's husband to transfer all their money to an offshore account in the Bahamas, which she's set up via seducing a Bahamian banker.
• Continuity Nod: It's a Johnson Production Group movie for Lifetime, so naturally Whittendale College figures into the plot, since Tucker and Gina are students there. For what it's worth, it's revealed that Whittendale's school colors are orange and black.
• Driven to Suicide: David Underhill, after losing his teaching job following Claire's kidnapping accusation, Ate His Gun in front of his young daughter Lucy.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Beautiful blonde Gina masterminds and executes a nasty revenge scheme on the Beauregards.
• Frame-Up: Maddy gets arrested for murdering Tucker, based on a well-established motive (she was mad at him for flirting with a stripper who crashed the party), weak support for her alibi (just her dad), her fingerprints on the scissors, and Tucker's blood on her car. But "Gina"/Lucy totally set her up. Perhaps unintentionally, Claire also appears to be a possible suspect in the murder, having actually threatened to kill him, and being away from home when the murder happened. She merely went to give Tucker a "stay away from my daughter" speech, and Gina waited until she left to kill him.
• Conspicuous Gloves: Gina wears them while she commits her mayhem, to hide her fingerprints.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • Claire's overprotection of Maddy stems from the incident when Claire thought she was being kidnapped. However...
  • Lucy Underhill, the daughter of the accused kidnapper, was thoroughly messed up by the events that ensued after the incident.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Maddy's mousy college friend Gina, who initially appears to be a peripheral character, becomes the movie's bitter vengeance-seeking villain who'll stop at nothing to destroy the Beauregard family.
• Hardboiled Detective: Nick Fox, a Private Detective Maddy hires to follow her mom, based on the recommendation of her cellmate. He's a drunk, and seems to regularly serve seedy clients. He duly follows Claire, but then discovers that Gina's plotting against the family.
• Here We Go Again!: At the end, the Beauregards move to a new neighborhood, and some girls invite Maddy to a party. Nudged on by Sean, Claire gives her approval and Maddy leaves. But then Claire follows her anyway.
• Idiot Ball:
  • For all her Mama Bear posturing, the whole story is set in motion by Claire's idiotic decision to leave grade school-aged Maddy unattended in public, when she could have easily taken her along when she went on the other side of the library rack to look for the book.
  • That said, David Underhill taking Maddy out the door was a poor decision as well. He could've easily just stayed with her until her mother returned, or, more sensibly, just looked for a librarian to help him.
  • Nick Fox pulling a gun and threatening Gina when he catches her robbing Sean Beauregard was a bit of a Didn't Think This Through move as well.
• It's All About Me: Claire is an unhealthy mix of this and My Beloved Smother, behaving in a truly overbearing way toward Maddy and bossing around everyone else as well, including the police.
• Mama Bear: Zig-zagged to a rather annoying degree. At first, it looks like this is going to be deliciously subverted, with overprotective Claire being the villain, but then it's established that she didn't kill Tucker, so it looks like the movie is taking her side and this is going to be another Lifetime tale of a brave mother saving her daughter, even though Claire is a particularly annoying, unlikable character. But then she seems to get called out a bit on her behavior and learns—up until the Here We Go Again! ending.
• Mexican Standoff: Gina has a gun as she forces Sean to empty his bank account and give her the money in his safe, then Nick Fox, who's been hiding in the house, confronts her with a gun. She shoots both men.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: The movie's backstory. While visiting the library, Claire left young Maddy alone while she asked a librarian to help her find a book. When Claire went back on the other side of the rack, Maddy was gone. Then she saw David Underhill leading Maddy out the door, and loudly accused him of trying to kidnap her. As Underhill, who turned out to be an elementary school teacher, explained, he was merely taking what appeared to be an abandoned young girl to the library's office, but Claire didn't believe him.
• Moment Killer: Claire twice busts Maddy while she gets action with Tucker, first when they kiss at the party, second as they've hit second base or so making out in a car.
• My Beloved Smother: While Claire is right to be concerned about the company Maddy keeps, following her to parties and crashing them to spy on her takes things a bit far.
• Never Trust a Title: The title wrongly implies that Claire is the villain, and that Maddy is the protagonist (the first act sets things up this way, but then subverts them in favor of a Villain Protagonist).
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: When David Underhill found a young Maddy in the library, he attempted to help her under the assumption she was a lost child. Unfortunately, the hyper-protective Claire accuses him of attempted kidnapping as a result, destroying David's life and driving him to suicide.
  • During the climax, rather than leave Gina tied up to die when her bomb goes off, Claire decides to free her. In return for Claire's act of mercy, Gina remorselessly punches her unconscious before fleeing the scene.
• Oh, Crap!: Gina's reaction on seeing a TV news story and learning that Sean survived the gunshot (but is still on life support).
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Claire's being snotty toward Tucker's frat brother Oliver when she grills him about the murder, Oliver adamantly reminds her that his best friend just got killed and he's having to deal with the grief, which seems to shut her up a bit.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: While he's maybe a bit hasty in arresting Maddy, Detective Kelly tries to conduct a thorough investigation, even admitting that some of the situation has him stumped and he needs all the help he can get from Claire after she starts getting pushy with him.
• Rule of Pool: With a character surviving a time bomb by diving into a backyard pool just as it goes off, this is about as SoCal a movie as can be.
• Sacrificial Lamb: The death of Nick Fox ramps up the movie's melodrama.
• Sacrificial Lion: Tucker is killed off early in the movie, but it takes a while to resolve exact who did it.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Dorky Gina becomes a beautiful Femme Fatale once she doffs the glasses and lets down her hair.
• Swiss Bank Account: Gina has an account set up in The Bahamas to place the Beauregards' money when she steals it.
• Time Bomb: The coup de grace of Gina's plot, complete with stacks of dynamite, placed in the fireplace of the Beauregard house at the climax.
• Useless Bystander Parent: While Sean seems to disapprove of how overprotective Claire is of their daughter, he never truly puts his foot down about his wife's unhealthy behavior.
• Villain Protagonist: At first she appears to be a minor character, but eventually the story revolves around Gina and her schemes.
• Wham Shot: As Nick Fox cases the Beauregard house while spying on Claire, he (and the audience) sees Gina, with her hair down and sans glasses, stealing a bag from their garbage can, which sets up The Reveal that Gina is Lucy Underhill.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Gina's plan is to frame Maddy, then steal the Beauregards' money and run off to the Bahamas, but it hits a snag when she kills Nick Fox and puts Sean Beauregard in the hospital, so then she tries to turn off Sean's life support, but gets caught before she can do it and tries to kill Claire.