Adopting Terror (2012 TV Movie) User Reviews

Some decent things but lacklustre on the whole

[TheLittleSongbird · 4/10 · 3 September 2013]

One of those movies that is neither good or bad but just below average. Adopting Terror does have some things going for it, the best aspect being the menacing performance of Brendan Fehr, an achievement for someone who doesn't have a huge amount to work with. The first 15 minutes or so are unsettling too, the baby is adorable and the locations show effort and a sense of atmosphere. The production values and supporting cast generally are very competent but they are never more than that, they're never cheap or bad but just without distinction throughout. Unfortunately the leads don't carry Adopting Terror well at all. Sean Astin has a flat character to begin with and he brings very little emotion in terms of acting which only accentuates that fact, instead it is a very stiff and lifeless performance. Samaire Armstrong's acting is a mix of overwrought overacting and disinterested mumbling, one of those vulnerable-meaning performances that doesn't strike the right chord in the least bit. The chemistry between Astin and Armstrong never convinces either. The music is far too heavy-sounding and too much of a dirge in terms of tempo, it does tone down a little later on but it's never memorable and it happens too late really. The script is also uncomfortably clunky and ham-fisted, delivered also with very little urgency and it never does find the right tone. The story is the chief factor in where Adopting Terror falls down, the ending is one that doesn't surprise in the least bit, the movie is often very dully paced especially in the middle and this is one thriller with very little if any suspense or thrills and instead reeks of predictability. If there were any scares intended at all they were very tame, and the more melodramatic elements didn't seem to be taken that seriously, it's all underwritten and overacted that any melodrama comes across as more cheesy than poignant. The characters are not developed and not easy to invest in, Fehr's character was the most rootable and that wasn't even the intention, that actually shows how flatly realised Astin and Armstrong's characters are. Overall, Adopting Terror starts well and has good locations, an adorable baby and one very good performance but the lead performances, music, script and story are really lacking. And the production values and supporting cast fall into the camp of never being amateurish but never standout-worthy either. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Not too bad

[abbienicolew · 5/10 · 14 September 2021]

The idea of this film was incredible, the execution lacked though. Still enjoyed it but the ending needed more structure. The character development lacked a little also.

THE POLICE ARE SLOW TO ACT UNLESS THERE IS A BODY

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 26 July 2018]

One of the things you can count on with Sean Astin is that he will give you a great performance no matter how lousy the script or dialogue. This is a made for TV Lifetime film with the expected quality. Tim (Sean Astin) and Cheryl (Samaire Armstrong) adopt a bay girl. The film implies Tim has some male issues.

Along with the baby girl, they also get as a bonus the murderous biological father (Brendan Fehr) as a stalker wanting his bay back, one that the state took away. The action builds as expected, including the Lifetime twist.

Lifetime fans will love it.I am less enthusiastic.

Nope.

[richieblac · 2/10 · 12 March 2013]

Screenplay: 3/10 Awkward. The writer just felt lost and unsure of himself. It's one of those things where he seems capable, but botched it anyway. So many things could have caused this, right down to him just being a lousy writer.

Casting: 0/10 Absolutely nothing redeeming about the casting. Zero chemistry, and actors that look far too uniformly plastic. 1 or 2 model-looking actors is fine, but when everyone looks cut out of a magazine, there's absolutely nothing to relate to. Let's not mention that the pairing of actors for the couple was a joke.

Cinematography: 3/10 Very by-the-books shots and zero creativity. So much opportunity here to create some redeeming quality by having some stylish framing, but nope. Nada. Nothing. 3 points for "just doing your job".

Grading: 6/10 Made this a category simply because this was the one thing I thought was decent in this film. The colors had a very natural feel and didn't come across as overly-stylized, which many good movies seem to over-do. But still, points are lost, because the colors did tend to beg for something more. What we get is something a bit too vibrant and "normal", like the way you'd grade a comedy film.

Directing: 1/10 Director, you alone could have saved so much of everything else's inadequacies. You were there, every step of the way, approving what was going on and guiding it along. What are you doing?! 1 point for getting the gig.

Sound: 6/10 Again, just "doing your job". The mix is good and well, but nothing really stuck out. Nothing was particularly bad though.

Music: 5/10 Starts off far too melodically heavy, easily to the point of feeling corny and forced. Later on, the composer seems to realize he should tone it down a bit. But the early portions of the film, especially, are a mess. That's significant, because this is when you're making your first impressions.

Now, I don't know who really had the biggest hand in making this suck so much. Was it an issue with producers? Did you guys know this wasn't good at all, but just wanted to "make a movie"? Or did you really think this was good in some way?

And who thought it was a good idea to give the biological father that stupid look with his hair combed back?

Blah.

Dreadful

[irish-meanie · 3/10 · 27 July 2014]

In order for me to really like a movie (or a book), I have to care about the characters. I want to empathize with them. In this case, I didn't, and ended up liking the bad boy more than the two "good guys" (who are, together, perhaps the most boringly flat couple I have ever seen.) The plot was so predictable, I knew what the supposed twist was going to be as soon as I saw her walk onto the screen. The only part I really enjoyed was watching the sexy villain stalk everyone and look menacing. He can come stalk me, if he likes.

The wife, Cheryl, was a vapid character, and the actress who played her should learn not to overact. And Sam Gamgee. Well...never mind. It was just poor casting all around, except for the lovely bad boy, who didn't really have to say anything anyway.

I gave it 3 stars, just because of him. If you have nothing, I mean nothing, else to do on a Sunday evening, perhaps watch this. You will be missing nothing if you pass it by.

Truly... Hilarious

[trixie69757-680-801883 · 1/10 · 9 May 2013]

If you're looking for a comedy horror that is so bad it's funny, this is a great movie.

One scene has the bio mom locking the bio dad in the trunk of a ...

Wait for it...

FIREBIRD. that's a hatchback, for those who didn't already know that... Kinda impossible to lock someone in a hatchback.

Superhd makes the adoptive moms makeup look horrible, and there are a TON of spoofs accidents and the like.

I thought it was great, horrible, but great. Quite a few b-lister familiar faces in here too!

The plot is totally predictable and incredibly cliché, which is just another charming hilarity.

Basically, a kid gets taken to cps, then adopted out, dad relocates daughter after serving time and stalks adoptive family all cliché tall dark and loomy...

The cps lady feels a little suspicious, like she's coming on to the husband or something just seems... Off.. OMG she's bio mom! AND she's working WITH bio dad!! Shocking!!

So many more cheesy moments, I won't spoil them all for you... And I sincerely hope I've met my ten line minimum because there really isn't enough substance in this movie to write ten lines about!

WOW--there's a trunk in a hatchback Firebird

[doycesub · 2/10 · 15 July 2016]

I was OK with the movie until the Kay character made the Kevin character get in the "trunk" of a Firebird that doesn't have a trunk. Then the man couldn't climb from the back of the car to the front and get out while the car was being set on fire. He kept yelling "open the trunk". I would think that the choice of vehicles was a poor one and the director should have changed that regardless of what was written. Also, the Kevin character got one year in prison for murdering a social worker. The Judge in the family court was as "dumb as a box of hammers" and the decision given wouldn't have been made based upon one witness. I used to do Family Social work in foster care and it would have been more involved than that!

Sorry guys, but this one is a stinker!

[bITCHYrEVIEWS · 3/10 · 9 August 2013]

I didn't catch this movie right at the beginning, so I can't comment on that, but after ten minutes of creepiness (the birthday party scene) I decided to give it a chance. As time went on I found myself shouting at the TV and growing angry at the characters and the decisions they were making. Lets go through a few situations that had me angry/annoyed.

The 1st one is the fact that they were so UNPREPARED for that baby, like seriously, who doesn't have a baby thermometer in their house when they have a new baby (or any children period). The adoptive "mother" kept asking people if her daughter felt warm, it's like "Hey stupid, go get a thermometer". THEN, they decide to go out for the night (Sorry, but I can't bring myself to CARE enough to remember where they were going), this while they KNOW the biological father is stalking them AND COULD potentially try to steal back the baby, UGH. To make matters worse, the adoptive mother's father (who was helping his wife babysit) LETS A COMPLETE STRANGER INTO THE HOUSE. This made no sense since the father was looking at the guy like he was some kind of criminal. It's like, "You look like a deviant, but come on in....there is no way you're the creepy stalker my daughter told us about." So yeah, some stranger coming by to ask for a ladder late at night isn't a little bit suspect. I'm sorry but, give your head a shake.

Next there is the way the cops and social worker handle the "stalker father" situation. There is NO WAY in hell anyone would ever be that uncaring about a situation like that. And secondly, there is no way I would put up with that kind of treatment when my child's safety is at stake...these scenes had me wanting to reach through the TV screen and slap the police and social worker. Terrible, just terrible. Oh and another thing, The TWIST....um who didn't see that one coming from a mile away LMAO. Wow, I just realized there is just too many horrible scenes (including the hospital one)to list all the ones that made me mad, but I will say that The chemistry between any of these characters was EXTREMELY lacking.

I like Sean Astin, but as a lead actor...um not so much, sorry not a good casting decision. The adoptive mother (Samaire Armstrong)was probably the worst casting decision overall, as she over-acted most of her scenes. Brendan Fehr was the only good thing about this movie. While, he didn't have much to work with...he still looked hot as the dark, emotionless psychopath who only wanted his daughter back.

I guess I'll leave it at that. In summary, if you are looking for a movie that is bad, but not awful enough to ruin your day...check this movie out — otherwise just SKIP IT.

Exciting if unoriginal thriller

[mgconlan-1 · 7/10 · 11 April 2012]

"Adopting Terror" is an intense and rather confusing melodrama which has two pages listed on IMDb.com, one a pre-production page that does not identify it as a TV-movie — were they hoping for a theatrical release and sold it to Lifetime when they didn't get one? — and one a post-release page but one which doesn't identify many of the actors, including star Sean Astin, John Astin's son. The plot: Tim Broadbent (Sean Astin, a stocky guy of medium height who doesn't really look that much like his dad, John Astin of "The Addams Family") and his wife Cheryl (who appears to have been played by Kristen Quintrall — the IMDb.com pages list her character as "Nikki" and this suggests a last-minute script revision by writers Micho Rutare, who also directed, and Nik Frank-Lehrer) adopt a few-months-old baby who's been in state custody. They do this through something called the Community First Adoption Agency, headed by Dr. Ziegler (Michael Gross), and the social worker assigned to the case to supervise the adoption and recommend whether it should be made permanent at the final hearing is a willowy young (younger than Cheryl!) white woman named Fay Hopkins (Monet Mazur).

What the Broadbents don't know but we do — at least we do if we watched this movie from the beginning (a couple of people who posted to IMDb.com about it didn't and therefore were confused) — is that the baby, Mona, was taken away from her parents in the first place and made a war of the state because she was living with her dad, Kevin Anderson (the tall, dark and sexy Brendan Fehr) when Child Protective Services got a call that she was being neglected, and when their worker (an African-American, like so many voice-of-reason authority figures in Lifetime movies) came over, Kevin shot her — presumably non-fatally, since he was convicted only of simple assault and was paroled in less than a year — then was ambushed by police outside the apartment building where he was living and arrested, while the baby was taken by the state and put in foster care until the Broadbents saw her picture online and initiated adoption proceedings.

The Broadbents are having Mona's one-year birthday party in a local park (there's a mention that this story takes place in San Diego but no recognizable San Diego locations appear) when Kevin crashes the party and takes out his own camera (a disposable film camera rather than the digital ones the Broadbents and Cheryl's parents are using, which clearly symbolizes the class differences between them) and takes Mona's picture. From then on Kevin stalks the Broadbents, and when Tim tries to turn the tables and stalk Kevin at his house (where he noticed 8" x 10" blow-ups of his photos of Mona on the wall), Kevin turns that around and gets a restraining order against him. The Broadbents go to Dr. Ziegler and ask for information on contacting Mona's birth mother, and are told there's nothing he can do because it was a closed adoption and mom's privacy needs to be protected — whereupon a furious Tim asks Ziegler how Kevin Anderson got their address if the information was supposed to be so confidential. Kevin shows up outside the home of a couple who are friends of the Broadbents, whose son bites Mona on the forehead during a play session — and a smarmily apologetic Fay tells the Broadbents on her next visit that she's going to have to photograph that and put it in their file.

Fay's rather smarmy manner — plus the fact that she's white on a network where virtually all the legitimate members of the helping professions are Black — makes us suspicious of her from the get-go, but about two-thirds of the way through the film the big reversal comes: Fay, who claimed to have masters' degrees in both social work and clinical psychology, is really an impostor; she's Mona's biological mother and she and Kevin are involved in a plot to derail the Broadbents' chances at legally adopting Mona so they can take her back for themselves. Kevin breaks into Dr. Ziegler's office by disguising himself as a janitor and kills him just when he's about to stumble on the real identity of Mona's birth mother (he's Web-surfing on his laptop for the information when he's croaked), and before that Kevin showed up at the hospital where the Broadbents were supposed to get Mona her childhood immunizations, kidnapped Mona but then gave her back when he was caught (once again he was in disguise, this time wearing the green scrubs the hospital itself issued to its own staff).

Though "Adopting Terror" is a bit melodramatic in the usual Lifetime manner, and it suffers from their decision to cut back on the soft-core porn that used to be the highlight of many a Lifetime movie (we only get a brief, furtive, shadowy glimpse of Kevin and Fay doing it, and they're fully clothed), it's also a quite competent if unoriginal thriller that gets better as it goes along, the exposition gets out of the way and Rutare's direction gets tighter and more effective.

Ridiculous, bringing a new low level to Made for TV B Movie.

[Robert_duder · 3/10 · 22 September 2012]

Maybe one of the most unfortunate things about this film was the potential for a solid thriller was there. Granted its probably not the most unique story and fairly typical in the stalker thriller concept but it still could have been entertaining. Instead, the film is one of the most amateur, slapped together, and poorly researched and directed films I have ever seen. The performances in the film aren't terrible but they certainly aren't good. However, with a horrendous script and awful directing, there is only so much an actor can do. The film opens with a scene that shocks and rivets you, and then very quickly you realize this is an amateur production by definition. There is a twist in the story but due to the poor writing you see that twist coming from a million miles with very non-subtle acting and clues.

Sean Astin gives his best B-Movie performance as the new Dad trying to protect his family. He's unlikable and almost annoying in the role which is really unfortunate. He can't carry the movie. TV actress Samaire Armstrong just seems ridiculous in the film. Her and Astin have zero chemistry and seem awkward together. Monet Mazur plays their social worker with a secret past. She does alright but its definitely a TV performance that doesn't hit any home runs. Brendan Fehr probably gives the best performance in the whole movie which is good because he is the evil villain so to speak. Its truly unfortunate he didn't have a better script because his villain could have been really something. TV 80's icon Michael Gross shows up in a cameo role and comes across as completely cheesy.

I literally laughed out loud when I saw co-writer, and director Micho Rutare's experience. This is the guy who co-wrote cheese-fests Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, Bigfoot and Meteor Apocalypse. There is a certain market for those cheesy disaster/monster type flicks but why would that director then go and do what should have been a serious thriller? He took no attempt at making this serious and turned it into a complete joke. Probably the worst part is how completely unbelievable the entire thing was because of a complete lack of research. There is really no reason to see this so called thriller. I didn't give it a complete zero because it was just barely tolerable but no one should ever push themselves to see this. 3/10

Fantastic Low-Budget Film!

[selumt0 · 10/10 · 12 September 2012]

Adopting Terror, deserves so much more credit than it deserves, under one million dollars, I was expecting a terrible film, but instead I got a decent film with great use of locations in it. The plot is about a married couple adopt a baby (that was taken from her biological father) but suffer the consequences of the father being around for too long. It's a predictable film, because it's been done a million times, but their was a great effort put into the production. If you're a fan of B movies, I suggest this may be the one for you. I overall give it a 7/10, The Asylum have been surprising me a lot lately, it does show they truly do have some talent after-all. -Trent Browning

Adopting Terror-...And Baby Makes Trouble ***1/2

[edwagreen · 9/10 · 11 April 2012]

This thriller is a good one since you don't realize through 3/4 of the film that it is actually a thriller.

You will first come to view the police and adoption agency both inadequate in providing for protection when an adopting couple begin to be immediately harassed by the biological father. Their inability to do anything to ameliorate the situation is shocking and shows what's wrong with the adoption system. Of course, this leads to further mayhem for all concerned.

You will begin to suspect that something is terribly amiss when the doctor in charge of the agency is murdered. It is at this point that the movie becomes a thriller with the real mother coming out of the wood-work and that in itself is a definite shocker.