It is a convention of almost any Lifetime film that the protagonist is slow in discovering that he or she is in grave danger from a deranged human being. But in "Your Husband in Mine" (a.k.a., "The Ex Next Door"), this premise is taken to absurd degrees.
A turning point in the film occurs when the artist of children's books named Katie Greenwood learns that her new neighbor, Louisa Share, is not only interested in renewing the romantic relationship with her husband, Dan Greenwood, but that Louisa has adopted Katie's last name, which appears on items Katie discovers in Louisa's mailbox.
The moment she recognized that Louisa was guilty of identity theft, she should have contacted the police. Instead, she continues to fraternize with Louisa and her new boyfriend, Finn Cooper, who, in fact, was rented by Louisa from a male escort service! Indeed, both Katie and Dan should have been on high alert to the presence of Louisa as their new neighbor. As one of Dan's golfing buddies tells him, "you can change your friends, but you can't change your exes!!!"
In her new book, Katie is searching for an ending with the theme of "never giving up." The film loosely developed that theme with the tenacity of Katie herself in never giving up on her husband, despite the fact that he could have been more forthcoming about his ties to Miss Share. Neither Katie nor Dan seemed to recognize how a woman scorned in to be feared.
But because of the delay, two of the casualties of Louisa Share are the kind maid Alice, who is surprised by Louisa and murdered in the home of the Greenwoods, and poor Finn, who gets wise to Louisa's plan to undo the marriage next door, but only asks her for more money, rather than contact the police. The result is that Finn is smothered and stabbed by Louisa.
A loose end of the film was the character of Patrick, who appeared to have a fixation on Katie that that seemed to rival Louisa's obsession for Dan. Is the marriage of Katie and Dan still under siege, due to the strange behavior of Patrick? As Katie likes to say about her drawing, "practice makes perfect." And young Patrick may have learned lessons from his close observations of the girl next door.
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