The latest Lifetime movie, "The Wrong Teacher," was billed as a "premiere" even though the date for it on imdb.com was 2018, not 2019, and it already had a review on imdb.com. Directed by David DeCoteau, working from a script by Robert Dean Klein, "The Wrong Teacher" might more accurately have been called "The Wrong Student," since it begins with the titular teacher visiting the City Lights Bookstore (which I found jarring since the only real bookstore I know of with that name is the legendary one in San Francisco, and the extreme long-shots DeCoteau gave to establish his city's geography were of an unending flatness, obviously not the terrain of famously hilly San Francisco!). Her name is Charlotte Hanson (Jessica Morris), and she's currently on the outs with her independent photographer boyfriend Scott (Jason-Shane Scott). She teaches English literature to seniors at Roosevelt High School and in her spare time she's trying to write a romance novel about a young widow in love with an older man, but she's blocked on it. So she goes to City Lights one night and there meets Chris Williams (Philip McElroy, a darkly handsome young man whose great looks and skillful acting should make him a future star).
She's impressed that someone that young is actually hanging around a physical bookstore instead of either not reading at all or ordering everything from amazon.com. She's also turned on by him, and they go out drinking at a bar called Blue (which seems to be the only bar in the entire city, though that's obviously because it was the only set the production company, Hybrid LLC, could afford to build) and then end up having sex in - of all places - her classroom at the high school. Then school starts the next day and Charlotte is shocked that her previous night's kinky paramour is also one of her new students. He assures her that he's just turned 18 and therefore at least she isn't in danger of being prosecuted for statutory rape, but even though she didn't know she was getting it on with one of her students when it happened, she's still liable to be fired and disgraced. Chris demands more from her, and when she makes it clear that she isn't going to have sex with him again he seeks his revenge.
"The Wrong Teacher" is actually a better-than-average Lifetime movie, skillfully directed by DeCoteau from an unusually complex and ambiguous script by Klein, and driven by an utterly haunting performance from Philip McElroy. Lifetime has churned out enough of these superficially charming psychos by now that the template for them has become well worn, but rarely has one caught both the surface appeal and the deep-seated psychopathology of one of these characters as well as McElroy has. I can only hope there are enough casting directors at major studios who watch Lifetime movies so they can give this quite compelling (as well as very hot-looking!) actor the opportunities he deserves.
She's impressed that someone that young is actually hanging around a physical bookstore instead of either not reading at all or ordering everything from amazon.com. She's also turned on by him, and they go out drinking at a bar called Blue (which seems to be the only bar in the entire city, though that's obviously because it was the only set the production company, Hybrid LLC, could afford to build) and then end up having sex in - of all places - her classroom at the high school. Then school starts the next day and Charlotte is shocked that her previous night's kinky paramour is also one of her new students. He assures her that he's just turned 18 and therefore at least she isn't in danger of being prosecuted for statutory rape, but even though she didn't know she was getting it on with one of her students when it happened, she's still liable to be fired and disgraced. Chris demands more from her, and when she makes it clear that she isn't going to have sex with him again he seeks his revenge.
"The Wrong Teacher" is actually a better-than-average Lifetime movie, skillfully directed by DeCoteau from an unusually complex and ambiguous script by Klein, and driven by an utterly haunting performance from Philip McElroy. Lifetime has churned out enough of these superficially charming psychos by now that the template for them has become well worn, but rarely has one caught both the surface appeal and the deep-seated psychopathology of one of these characters as well as McElroy has. I can only hope there are enough casting directors at major studios who watch Lifetime movies so they can give this quite compelling (as well as very hot-looking!) actor the opportunities he deserves.