'Nightmare Pageant Moms' Review: A dull and predictable plot takes the thrill out of thriller

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Lifetime has dropped another thriller, ‘Nightmare Pageant Moms’, which features revenge, jealousy, murder and a mother's madness. The story centers around a mother who can go to any lengths to win a mother-daughter pageant show just to get back at her mother. While the characters did a great job, the ending of the story didn’t do justice to the genre.

‘Nightmare Pageant Moms’ stars Gina Simms as Adeline Bordeaux, Brittney Q Hill as Emilia Connors, Summer Monet as Sophie Connors and Rachel Walters as Lilliana Bordeaux. The supporting cast comprises Sallie Glaner as Rebecca Bordeaux, Muretta Moss as Darcy Johnson, Isabelle Almoyan as Mia Johnson and Jillian Walzer as Faye Stone among others. The movie revolves around Emilia and her daughter, Sophie, who find themselves in a financial bind. To secure funds for Sophie's college education, they decide to participate in a local mother-daughter beauty pageant, which offers a generous scholarship prize. Unbeknownst to them, they soon discover that a competing team is willing to resort to unsettling measures in their pursuit of victory. 

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Everyone wants to win

‘Nightmare Pageant Moms’ opens with, Adeline, who is jealous and selfish, killing a girl, Harper, when she confronts her with the harsh truth of “never winning a pageant in her life." The movie centers around Emilia and Sophie. After Emilia's husband dies of cancer, she struggles financially. When Sophie got into literature program she applied for, the mother-daughter duo decides to enter the pageant to win the money to pay for the fees. Sophie loves poetry while Emilia, who used to play the violin, decides to do it again for her daughter.

After Emilia and Sophie get selected among the Top 10 mother-daughter pairs, rival and pageant sponsor Rebecca’s daughter Adeline gets apprehensive and goes to unimaginable lengths to get rid of the competition. When Sophie and Emilia get selected among the Top 4 finalists, Adeline tries to bribe the show’s judge. This backfires and she  pushes him from a bridge, killing him. However, the Sophie and Emilia continue to make progress. Adeline attempts several twisted ways to get rid of them, blackmailing her only friend Darcy, using a teenager as bait, trying to bribe another judge and even using her own daughter, Lilliana, as a pawn to win the competition just to show her mother Rebecca that she’s worth it. Rebecca, who is queen of the pageants, was disappointed at Adeline for never winning a show, and again, she fails to impress her mother at the cost of many lives as Emilia and Sophie reveal her secret, finally. 

Predictable plot and lack of thrills

The actors did a phenomenal job with the storyline, but the movie is not at all thrilling and the predictable plot makes it all the more boring. In the first 15 minutes of the movie, it becomes clear where the story is headed. ‘Nightmare Pageant Moms’ seems more like a snoozefest and does not live up to the standards other movies in the same genre have set.  

'Nightmare Pageant Moms' is available to stream on Lifetime.

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