Break-Up Nightmare (2016) User Reviews

Keep Your Shirt On!

[wes-connors · 4/10 · 1 May 2016]

In smallish-town Redford, beautiful 19-year-old Celesta DeAstis (as Rachel Light) likes to open her shirt and swap spit with handsome and muscular Mark Grossman (as Troy). He says college girls are coming on hard and wants to take some photos of Ms. DeAstis to remind him what he's got back home in Redford. After a make-out session, she reluctantly agrees to pose for some topless cellphone photos. Two weeks later, the couple has a bitter break-up, with DeAstis' sexy but strong-armed mama Jennifer Dorogi (as Barbara) throwing Mr. Grossman out on his keister. As you may have guessed, the topless photos are shared on the Internet. DeAstis can't go anywhere without eliciting sneers, snickers and sexual propositions...

"Break-Up Nightmare" is a fairly obvious story...

The "revenge pornography" topic is commendable. But this treatment, by director Mark Quod of writer Delondra Williams' tale, is woeful. It simply degenerates into absurdity. Best is the film's establishment of setting. They begin by giving us a look at Redford, with a little nod to the classic "Peyton Place" opening from the 1960s. Locations are nicely interspersed with interiors throughout. Best performance is that of DeAstis' curly-haired co-worker Freeman Lyon (as Ryan), he cracks bad jokes and acts most naturally. The producers make the town rich in institutionalized Black Power and reverse the gender roles given strong, eyebrow-arched Ms. Dorogi and her girly ex-husband. It seems too much like pandering, though.

**** Break-Up Nightmare (2016/3/6) Mark Quod ~ Jennifer Dorogi, Celesta DeAstis, Freeman Lyon, Mark Grossman

Disappointing Delivery of a Tired Product

[HeatherOHara · 5/10 · 14 March 2016]

This film is everything that folks who make fun of Lifetime movies are making fun of. It suffers from a very poor script, and actors from the Mediocre School of Acting. The mother, in particular, is pretty dreadful, though the daughter could probably do quite well in another story with a different director.

Part of the problem is that at its heart, this is little more than an after school special, about a stupid teenage girl who does stupid things. We get it - we have been 'getting it' for the past ten years. And as such, this feels tired and washed out.

Some of the offerings from Lifetime are really very good, but this is not one of them. As average as they come. It should be called 'Breakup Nightmare: Now in Beige!'

parody presented as non-parody?

[rajajuju · 5/10 · 18 November 2016]

I saw this was produced by "The Asylum" which is the same team behind Syfy "hits" like Z Nation and Sharknado, etc. This was the only reason I continued to watch, as I normally have no interest in Lifetime shows or movies at all.

I honestly had the feeling that the movie was written/directed/produced in the same manner as a parody film like "Airplane", or "Scary Movie", and that they just dialed it back a tiny bit so it was not too overtly apparent. The end result is apparently the standard kind of Lifetime movie that all the girls and womens and other bon-bon chompers love to watch, all curled up under a cozy blanket or whatever.

Its so, so, so trite - so contrived - so utterly ludicrous. Its definitely laughable, on its face - but again the whole premise is just boring enough so that it actually rides the line between complete farce and standard TV movie. If this was intentionally done - its fairly brilliant. I can see this as a winning formula for subversive production teams who are forced to somehow pay the bills, and yet still wish to leverage their particular talents and skills. Its almost Troma-like in its blatant and wanton stupidity.

So, Im not sure what kind of rating to give it - because I could be reading far too much into this. It could be a very honest and earnest attempt at a "solid Lifetime movie", whatever that is. I just have a hard time thinking the guys behind Sharknado would be able to do something like this without recognizing the inherent tongue-in-cheek nature of the material.

Its worth a watch in this light, if you don't have anything better to do. Somewhat fascinating in a "what if..." kind of way.

Horrible acting, worst lifetime I've seen in a while

[crystalsharpewisham · 1/10 · 28 September 2017]

I know that lifetime movies are not known for their amazing plot and story lines.. but this movie is horrible. The plot is ridiculous, the writing is comical.. no one reacts like that..and the acting is so fake..the best actors in the movie were the cops who arrested the kid in the house.. because they didn't talk much. Please take some acting classes!

It looks like a turtle...?

[SusieSalmonLikeTheFish · 2/10 · 27 January 2017]

Forget the fact that this is another modern Lifetime movie with a so-perfect-it's-fake Stepford mom and daughter duet, but who the heck wrote the script for this? Typical, predictable, the same tired old internet safety themes that no teenager takes seriously anymore because we've been drilling it into kids' heads for over a decade now... look, we all get the point, nothing ever good comes out of sexting. It's a dumb and childish behavior. But c'mon, about a day after her boyfriend posts them up on his "revenge porn" site (wasn't that a fad over seven years ago?), she has men crawling out of the woodwork, including her next-door middle-aged neighbor, hoping to get it on with her? Isn't that just the least bit unrealistic? Oh, and get this: somebody sends her a photo of their... uh, their manhood... and her remark is, "ooh! It looks like a turtle!" Her mother, oddly enough the sudden expert, refers to it as a "dick pic"...

Uh, yeah, somewhere along the way I must've missed out on cases in the world where perverts are seriously willing to take internet trolling and cyber-bullying to this extreme. I mean, I know it happens, but not that fast and not to the point where this film gets to! This entire thing was just a ridiculous circus trying to be scary but just coming across as strangely comedic.

Side Splitting

[chow913 · 7/10 · 6 May 2016]

I just saw this film and almost laughed myself to death! As you've probably guessed, the plot revolves around a girl named Rachel whose ex boyfriend Troy posts nude photos of her online.

Talk about "cutting to the chase." The slimy boyfriend takes the nude photos and the break up all within the first scene of the movie!

Within the same hour of the break up there are nude photos of her online and perverts are literally showing up at the coffee shop where Rachel works to harass her. And it just doesn't stop!

Her neighbors are stalking her, Rachel's mother is fired from her job, they're being followed by a black van, people are breaking into their house. HTF does this happen within a matter of hours?

Even the people at church are harassing her. This begs the question, aren't all of her friends, co workers, and neighbors admitting they're visiting revenge porn websites on an hourly basis? Doesn't this shame them?

The funniest scenes involve Rachel's mother. I haven't seen acting like this since the mom/aunt in 'Sleep Away Camp.' Seriously, we have to wonder what the rejected footage looked like if these are the line deliveries chosen for the final cut. I want to know!

The character of Rachel's mother is dumb as rocks to start with. When they're being followed by the black van she pulls into a dark alley and gets out of her car to confront their stalker. Great idea. That's like lighting a match to inspect a gas leak.

The second funniest scene is where Rachel tells her mother within an hour of her nude photos going online. As if her mother will find out sooner or later. So her mother visits revenge porn websites?

This is also the case when the sleazy ex boyfriend Troy is framed for child pornography. Rachel brings it up on her phone to show her parents. WTF would they be looking at child porn in the first place?

The stand out funniest scene is when we meet ex boyfriend Troy's mother played by real life porn star Amy Lindsay. Not kidding!!! That's like Ron Jeremy making an appearance in 'Ghostbusters.' Then, Rachel and Troy's mothers get into a knock down drag out catfight! Yes! More Lifetime Network movies need to feature scenes like this.

Also of worthy note is the scene where her next door neighbor apologizes to Rachel for making creepy faces at her in public. And she accepts his apology! Again, WTF? He's admitting to being a dirty old man and following revenge porn websites and stalking a teenage girl and she tells him, "It's alright"?

It's definitely worth a watch.

Life Ruinerz

[lavatch · 8/10 · 6 May 2020]

It was shocking to see depicted in "Break-Up Nightmare" the lengths to which people would go to ruin the lives of others by internet shaming. There was not simply one villainous monster, but a host of perverts who are part of the life-damaging culture depicted in the film.

The centerpiece of the narrative is the young flute player, Rachel Light, a recent high school grad from Redford, who aspires to study at the conservatory. But when she breaks up with her boyfriend Troy, compromising photos are posted on the odious Life Ruinerz website. Troy may be at fault for coercing Rachel into the taking the photos in the first place. But it soon becomes clear that someone other than Troy is the mastermind (or masterminds) of evil.

The filmmakers developed a good set of characters as candidates for turning the lives of Rachel and her mother Barbara into a nightmare. Heading the list is the dastardly Ashton Banks, who runs the Life Ruinerz website. Then, there is the creepy neighbor Mr. White, who shamelessly flirts with Rachel at the cinema. Ryan is Rachel's co-worker at Castle's Deli, and Ryan seems just a little too offbeat to be considered her devoted friend.

One of the best scenes in the film is the moment when Barbara and Rachel attend a church service and are shunned and shamed by the parishioners, who should recognize that Rachel was being smeared on the internet and deserves a little Christian charity. To add insult to injury, Father Renley delivers a sermon on lust worthy of one of the firebrand Puritan Jonathan Edwards!

The action was brisk in the home stretch of the film. By then, the focal point was the closer bonding of Barbara and Rachel. Barbara was a devoted teacher of preschool kids and a wonderful single parent. The film demonstrated that there is no deeper love than that of a mother and a daughter in time of need.

A warning on sexting with a typical Lifetime treatment

[phd_travel · 6/10 · 30 January 2018]

This movie starts off like a warning about sexting after a girl's pictures end up on a revenge porn website. Mom and daughter try hard to take them down but the police are not too co-operative. They suspect her ex boyfriend. There are some twists and turns to keep you entertained enough. Things end up more like a typical Lifetme thriller eventually.

Watchable enough.

Quite good Lifetime thriller

[mgconlan-1 · 8/10 · 4 May 2016]

Last Saturday, April 30 I watched three, count 'em, three movies in a row on the Lifetime channel, all apparently shown under a rubric called "Don't Mess with Mommy" even though only the first really came under that theme. It was also by far the best of the three: "Break-Up Nightmare." The principals in this one are mother Barbara Light (Jennifer Dorogi) and her teenage daughter Rachel (Celesta DeAstis) — and kudos are definitely in order to casting director Scotty Mullen for finding two actresses who look enough alike that we can believe them as mother and daughter (though Jennifer Dorogi is hot enough we could even more readily believe her as Celesta DeAstis' older sister than as her mom!). In the opening scene Rachel is in her bedroom with her boyfriend Troy (the genuinely hot Mark Grossman — we don't get to see him shirtless, alas, but even covered he's got great pecs!), and of course, this being a Lifetime movie about a teenage girl, her boyfriend wants to have sex with her but she's holding him off. She does yield to his entreaties to let him take naked pictures of her, saying that he'll be going off to college (probably on an athletic scholarship because he doesn't seem like the brightest bulb in the chandelier) and wants her on his phone to remind himself of her and help him fend off the college girls that will be after him. Then there's a title reading "Two Weeks Later" (something of a pleasant surprise since Lifetime movies generally jump months or even years between these prologues and the main body of the films), and two weeks later Troy has dumped Rachel and is looking for female companionship that will be more, shall we say, accommodating. He's also got his revenge against Rachel by posting her photos to a so-called "revenge porn" site whose proprietor, Ashton Banks (Daron McFarland), has an attitude towards women that makes Donald Trump's look like a model of sensitivity by comparison. The motto of his site is "Squirt 'Em and Hurt 'Em," and it's clear from the text on his home page that it's based on the idea that if a woman turns down a man for sex, she's made herself fair game for any sort of humiliation he cares to dish out. Rachel's pics end up on this site and go viral, and in the little town of "Redford" (pop. 2,340) in which this is taking place, everyone, it seems, recognizes her.

"Break-Up Nightmare" has a couple of typical flaws for a Lifetime movie: the almost supernatural power of the villain and a "surprise" twist that's considerably less surprising than the writer thought it was. But the film is also an engagingly tense thriller, well directed by Quod (whose avoidance of flanging and other fancy music-video effects seemed all the more welcome compared to the way the next two films on Lifetime's program were directed) and convincingly acted all the way around. This isn't a great movie but it's a reasonably convincing thriller that may push credibility but doesn't go whole-hog into crazy or silly plotting, and the ending is a logical summing-up of what's gone before instead of the nihilistic wrap-ups of Lifetime's other two films the same night, "Seduced" and "Bad Behavior."

***

[edwagreen · 8/10 · 27 April 2016]

Story showing the hazards of the internet. A 19 year old does suggestive posing for her boyfriend and when they break up, the pictures are on the internet and of course the film deals with how this ruins her life among the people of the town.

Since this is a Lifetime film, the culprit isn't who it appears to be-the boyfriend. Wait until you see who was sending these pictures around and placed a hidden camera in the house causing the mother, a teacher, to be placed on a leave of absence. At least, we saw a sympathetic principal.

Naturally, the main criticism is the stupidity of the girl for posing like this to begin with in the age of the internet.