Being an avid reader of Nora Roberts I was disappointed by the film. It did not go into the depth that the book goes into and leaves out not only interesting information and characters, like one of Jo Hathaway's siblings, but other vital information to the story line as well. If they had made the movie longer it probably would have been better (since the movie is only two hours long with commercials), but they didn't. To be fair though the movie did follow pretty closely to the story line of the book. My recommendation is that if you read and our a fan of Nora Roberts then don't watch it, you'll be disappointed. If you haven'read this author or this specific book it's an ok movie, not the greatest but not the worst.
7 Reviews
When the past meets present
sol-kay16 October 2009
Warning: Spoilers
(Some Spoilers) Suffering from burn out at her job as a well known free lance photojournalist Jo Ellen Hathaway, Mellissa Gilbert, has the extra pressure of being stalked by an unknown computer geek who's sending Jo very revealing digital photos of herself through his E-Mail. It's when Jo tries to get away from the stalker by spending a few weeks at her family's island retreat where they run a inn and bungalow colony that things start to get even worse!
We soon start to realize that Jo together with her brother Brian, Chris William Martin, and father Sam Hathaway, Kenneth Welsh, have never gotten over the mysterious disappearance of their mom and Sam's wife Annabelle, Kristen Ross, who one summer day some twenty years ago just walked out on them never to be seen again! What these mysterious E-Mails sent to Jo soon reveal is that the person sending them in fact knows the reason for Annabelle's disappearance as well as the person who's most responsible for it!
It takes a while for the movie to unwind with it concentrating on Jo's mental state in regards to both her mother's strange disappearance and the stalker who's E-Mails are a lot more personal then what at first Jo thought. What puts things about both the stalker and Jo's mom into focus is when Nathan Ddelaney, Costas Mandylor; a regular on Lifetime Movies, unexpectedly shows up at the island. Despite being the first boy who ever kissed Jo when she was 12, which she had completely forgot about, Nathan also has this very deep and shocking secret that he just recently found about her missing mother!
***SPOILER ALERT****The person who's been sending Jo those E-Mails about herself had in fact included among them a photo of her mom that Jo mistook for herself! The photo revealed that Mrs. Hathaway did not in fact desert Jo and her family twenty years ago! It showed that she was raped and murdered and buried in the swamp on the island! What's even more disturbing is the person who committed that vicious crime is the one sending Jo those shocking E-Mail photo's! And what's even worse is that he's now on the island looking to finish the job that he started some 20 years ago by him now murdering Mrs. Hathaway's daughter Jo as well! In fact it was Jo, who was 12 at the time, who was the very reason that he murdered her mother in the first place!
We soon start to realize that Jo together with her brother Brian, Chris William Martin, and father Sam Hathaway, Kenneth Welsh, have never gotten over the mysterious disappearance of their mom and Sam's wife Annabelle, Kristen Ross, who one summer day some twenty years ago just walked out on them never to be seen again! What these mysterious E-Mails sent to Jo soon reveal is that the person sending them in fact knows the reason for Annabelle's disappearance as well as the person who's most responsible for it!
It takes a while for the movie to unwind with it concentrating on Jo's mental state in regards to both her mother's strange disappearance and the stalker who's E-Mails are a lot more personal then what at first Jo thought. What puts things about both the stalker and Jo's mom into focus is when Nathan Ddelaney, Costas Mandylor; a regular on Lifetime Movies, unexpectedly shows up at the island. Despite being the first boy who ever kissed Jo when she was 12, which she had completely forgot about, Nathan also has this very deep and shocking secret that he just recently found about her missing mother!
***SPOILER ALERT****The person who's been sending Jo those E-Mails about herself had in fact included among them a photo of her mom that Jo mistook for herself! The photo revealed that Mrs. Hathaway did not in fact desert Jo and her family twenty years ago! It showed that she was raped and murdered and buried in the swamp on the island! What's even more disturbing is the person who committed that vicious crime is the one sending Jo those shocking E-Mail photo's! And what's even worse is that he's now on the island looking to finish the job that he started some 20 years ago by him now murdering Mrs. Hathaway's daughter Jo as well! In fact it was Jo, who was 12 at the time, who was the very reason that he murdered her mother in the first place!
Why so many changes?
buddhababy622 March 2009
Warning: Spoilers
I was wondering why they made so many changes from the book to the movie. First they leave out a sister and than they change the killer of Jo's mother. In the book Nate's father had killed Jo's mother all those years ago keeping photos and a journal about it so he could relive it whenever he wanted. David found it and began to fantasize about repeating the act. So he faked his own death and started stalking Jo. That is when Nate found out what their father had done and went to the island to tell the family. But in the movie they have it as David killed Jo's mother when he was 15 years old. The movie was alright but it just came off a little rushed.
Not recommended. I've seen better.
KAnnD8615 March 2006
The main plot of this movie, from what I could gather, was about a famous photographer, Jo Ellen Hathaway, who has been being stalked for quite some time. She returns to the island she grew up on in an effort to get away from the stalker and get some well-needed relaxation time. On the island, she meets up with old friends and boyfriends and works on relationships with her family. However, she can't shake the feeling that she's still being watched.
Overall, this movie wasn't very good. I had a hard time following what was going during much of the film. I wasn't clear who the characters were in relation to one another or what made them do the things they did. Most of the characters were very 1-dimensional. The main character, Jo Ellen, made some irrational decisions I don't understand. The dialogue wasn't believable, but it wasn't as bad as some TV movies I've seen. I'm not sure what I expected from this movie. I was disappointed though. Not recommended.
Overall, this movie wasn't very good. I had a hard time following what was going during much of the film. I wasn't clear who the characters were in relation to one another or what made them do the things they did. Most of the characters were very 1-dimensional. The main character, Jo Ellen, made some irrational decisions I don't understand. The dialogue wasn't believable, but it wasn't as bad as some TV movies I've seen. I'm not sure what I expected from this movie. I was disappointed though. Not recommended.
A bit weak and a bit tedious - not a strong combination
caa8212 June 2008
I didn't get to view this opus continuously from beginning to end - but a number of interruptions didn't matter much.
Basically, Melissa Gilbert's character travels from the big city, back to her home on a remote island, to evade someone apparently stalking her.
After some banter with the townsfolk, some flashbacks, etc. - none too dramatic or interesting, but with a bit of "Blair Witch"-type photography, indicating either someone may be tracking her, or she thinks they are (I didn't really care much which it might be), finally she runs into the actor playing Nathan.
Thinking he was the stalker, taking photos of her, she flees. He catches her, and she hysterically demands he destroy his film, despite his indication he was simply photographing the lake. She doesn't recognize him; he mentions he had been in one of the cabins 18 years prior. She then instantly remembers him, and even girlishly references that he had, back then, rendered her first kiss. She inquires about his father, and when told he has died, expresses deep sympathy and says she wishes she'd known, and they proceed to chat as if they were old friends instead of persons who had met briefly, nearly two decades ago -- he apparently a teenager (she is later indicated as having been 12) both about one-third las old as they are now. She, though, feels compelled to indicate she has no interest in any development of a relationship with him, while he (weirdly) acts as if his interest in her had never waned, despite her being a pre-teen then. (One of the silliest aspects of this type film is the characters moving from eerie, chilling, frightened demeanor, to chatting like Lucy and Ethel, without missing a beat. Likewise, not recognizing someone after many years, and then expressing opinions and concerns, again, as if they had been in-touch all these years without interruption.)
Later, either that evening at the next, there's a beach party, where Nathan kisses her again, and provides her with some amateur psychoanalysis.
Melissa continues to worry about the stalker, and as she shows her aunt the computer images of the stalker's photos of her, and - even though she's an apparent world-class Chicago-based photog herself - seems perpetually perplexed as to how stalker had succeeded in photographing her --- "Auntie" in the ominous tone of a dark film foreshadowing, gasps that the one pic of her nude (tastefully) in actually HER MOTHER!!!! (Auntie's sister).
This scene looked to me like something two of the gals on SNL might have done in a cornball sketch.
The two prime characters continued on; throughout Melissa looked like she might have had one too many shots of caffeine, and "Nathan" like he could use some.
As these two and the attendant support cast continued to the film's conclusion, with their romantic interactions and mysterious overtones, it all was simply a pedestrian presentation of the same type of fiction which Nora Roberts and other authors of her genre produce for the "reading?" public. Melissa's constant prattling about the mysterious pictures from her stalker was, overall, more tedious and even boring, rather than providing the mystery of suspense intended. And the film was replete with dialog of the small-town islanders criticizing Melissa for her having fled to the big city, and wondering why anyone would want to leave. This is an oft appearing feature of this type of film and its base novel.
The "romantic" interludes between the lead couple made one hanker for Mickey Rourke and Kim Bassinger, or Michael Douglas and Glenn Close.
Even the big "revelations" aren't that interesting or startling; this one should be a weak 2*, but add one since the scenery and filming is better than most TV flicks.
Basically, Melissa Gilbert's character travels from the big city, back to her home on a remote island, to evade someone apparently stalking her.
After some banter with the townsfolk, some flashbacks, etc. - none too dramatic or interesting, but with a bit of "Blair Witch"-type photography, indicating either someone may be tracking her, or she thinks they are (I didn't really care much which it might be), finally she runs into the actor playing Nathan.
Thinking he was the stalker, taking photos of her, she flees. He catches her, and she hysterically demands he destroy his film, despite his indication he was simply photographing the lake. She doesn't recognize him; he mentions he had been in one of the cabins 18 years prior. She then instantly remembers him, and even girlishly references that he had, back then, rendered her first kiss. She inquires about his father, and when told he has died, expresses deep sympathy and says she wishes she'd known, and they proceed to chat as if they were old friends instead of persons who had met briefly, nearly two decades ago -- he apparently a teenager (she is later indicated as having been 12) both about one-third las old as they are now. She, though, feels compelled to indicate she has no interest in any development of a relationship with him, while he (weirdly) acts as if his interest in her had never waned, despite her being a pre-teen then. (One of the silliest aspects of this type film is the characters moving from eerie, chilling, frightened demeanor, to chatting like Lucy and Ethel, without missing a beat. Likewise, not recognizing someone after many years, and then expressing opinions and concerns, again, as if they had been in-touch all these years without interruption.)
Later, either that evening at the next, there's a beach party, where Nathan kisses her again, and provides her with some amateur psychoanalysis.
Melissa continues to worry about the stalker, and as she shows her aunt the computer images of the stalker's photos of her, and - even though she's an apparent world-class Chicago-based photog herself - seems perpetually perplexed as to how stalker had succeeded in photographing her --- "Auntie" in the ominous tone of a dark film foreshadowing, gasps that the one pic of her nude (tastefully) in actually HER MOTHER!!!! (Auntie's sister).
This scene looked to me like something two of the gals on SNL might have done in a cornball sketch.
The two prime characters continued on; throughout Melissa looked like she might have had one too many shots of caffeine, and "Nathan" like he could use some.
As these two and the attendant support cast continued to the film's conclusion, with their romantic interactions and mysterious overtones, it all was simply a pedestrian presentation of the same type of fiction which Nora Roberts and other authors of her genre produce for the "reading?" public. Melissa's constant prattling about the mysterious pictures from her stalker was, overall, more tedious and even boring, rather than providing the mystery of suspense intended. And the film was replete with dialog of the small-town islanders criticizing Melissa for her having fled to the big city, and wondering why anyone would want to leave. This is an oft appearing feature of this type of film and its base novel.
The "romantic" interludes between the lead couple made one hanker for Mickey Rourke and Kim Bassinger, or Michael Douglas and Glenn Close.
Even the big "revelations" aren't that interesting or startling; this one should be a weak 2*, but add one since the scenery and filming is better than most TV flicks.
I really liked this movie..very well executed
Jammy2 February 2006
For a TV movie the dialogue is really good in Sanctuary. And it's by far Melissa Gilbert's best adult performance. The relationship between her and Costas Mandylor is really sexy and romantic. They have some really fiery scenes. There is one where they are at a campfire and he's flirting with her, she thinks he's going to kiss her, she's finally ready and he doesn't, sort of punishment for all her coolness and it's fantastic. But really you get the feeling they've probably been in love since they were kids and their families spent summers at the island where Melissa Gilbert's family owns a big Bed & Breakfast. It has a lot of of real emotion especially in the scenes with Kathy Baker. It looks more like a movie movie than a TV movie because some of the photography is really beautiful, set on an island on the east coast. The music is good too, not the usual TV stuff. Also it has a lot more humor than you expect to find in a thriller. Keeps you guessing until the end which is kind of cheesy but it is after all made from a Nora Roberts book. All in all it is a really good movie.
Guilty Pleasure
macgill3-113 February 2006
Warning: Spoilers
There was a lot I enjoyed about this film. It didn't seem like a film for television. It seemed much higher quality with all the diverse film techniques used and the beautiful hypnotic imagery Katt Shea is known for.
Melissa Gilbert gives a terrific performance- very believable and natural. She's so cute- you can't help but like Melissa Gilbert! Costas Mandylor and Kathy Baker also give some great performances. I've enjoyed Kathy Baker in everything I've seen her in.
The story itself feels like the guilty Nora Roberts pleasure that it is. The film is somewhat predictable but still highly enjoyable and entertaining. It's a saucy fiery romance coupled with a psychological thriller. FUN! You'll love the music in it too! Invite the girls over and pop some popcorn!
Melissa Gilbert gives a terrific performance- very believable and natural. She's so cute- you can't help but like Melissa Gilbert! Costas Mandylor and Kathy Baker also give some great performances. I've enjoyed Kathy Baker in everything I've seen her in.
The story itself feels like the guilty Nora Roberts pleasure that it is. The film is somewhat predictable but still highly enjoyable and entertaining. It's a saucy fiery romance coupled with a psychological thriller. FUN! You'll love the music in it too! Invite the girls over and pop some popcorn!
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