When it comes to your grandma, you usually think of good childhood memories, home-cooked meals, extra candy, and lots of warm and fuzzy feelings. So of course, Lifetime had to find a way to mess that up with their latest movie about a truly creepy grandma. Psycho Granny may not be based on a true story, but the plot will make you wary of any long-lost family members showing up at your doorstep — even they happen to be a sweet older lady.
According to Lifetime's official description, the film stars Brooke Newton as Samantha, a grieving woman dealing with the recent loss of her mother. Her pain is eased by the arrival of her grandma Colleen (Robin Riker), who suddenly appears to help Samantha cope with the tragedy and prepare for a new baby. Like the usual Lifetime plot, Samantha is way too trusting and forms a quick bond with Colleen despite her husband Brad warning her to be careful.
Everything seems to be going well until Samantha learns a bad secret about Colleen's past, forcing her to go head-to-head with her apparently not-so-sweet grandma in order to protect her family. It's far-fetched, to say the least, but it will certainly have all the juicy, heart-pumping drama that Lifetime fans have come to love.
Pyscho Granny's trailer offers a brief (and humorous) look at the movie, but doesn't really tell us much about what the story will entail. It mostly features Colleen giving a chilling toast to her family, who is unconscious (or perhaps even dead) at their dining room table. The trailer also cuts between several other scenes in which Colleen (if that’s her real name) stabs, injects, and chokes several people for no apparent reason beyond her being, well, a psycho granny.
The final moments of the video feature Samantha saying "This isn't your family" before Colleen puts a cloth over her mouth. It's not clear how and why Colleen targeted Samantha's family, but she certainly seems to be lying about her true identity.
All of this, naturally, raises a lot of questions that need to be answered in this film. First of all, where is Samantha's dad? There's no information about whether he's dead or alive, but perhaps an estranged or non-existent relationship with him left the door open for Colleen to make up this lie. Samantha was presumably close to her mother, so she would have at least known her maternal grandmother's name and what she looked like, right?
Secondly, assuming Colleen isn't related to Samantha, why did she target them? How did she just happen to know they were going through a rough time, and would be vulnerable to this kind of deception? Has she been stalking them? Could she have had something to do with the death of Samantha's mom? And what's her endgame here, exactly? There are so many directions that this could go.
Find out how Samantha deals with Colleen's reign of terror when Psycho Granny airs May 18 on Lifetime.
