Safe Harbor (2006)

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

At the beginning, when Portland police conduct a successful raid on some nefarious folks, we are introduced to detectives Carly Sagan (Tracey Gold) and her partner Joe Avery (Mitchell Kosterman). They have worked together for two years, although it is apparent that Carly likes to march to the beat of her own drum. Our protagonists are called in to Safe Harbor, a refuge for abused young adolescents ages 12-16. The haven is owned by wealthy Olivia Wyatt (Pamela Perry). Her assistant is quirky Julia Thorpe (Stacy Grant), who seems to harbor a secret (no pun intended). Wyatt's son Sam (Steve Bacic), an investment broker, is an old friend of Carly. Anyway, a woman's strangled body is found on the harbor's grounds, with a painted red satanic image on the wall next to the body. After investigating, it is found that the young woman was a previous resident of the center. Tracking down the leads points to a previous maintenance man of the harbor, Ray Oakum (Scott Heindl). When the detectives confront him, he shoots his way out. We don't get to see much of him again until well into the second part. Soon there is another strangled body with a red satanic image, and also another suspect, weird artist Daz Cobair (Jody Racicot). Meanwhile we discover that Carly was once a resident at Safe Harbor; she had witnessed her crazy father shoot her mother to death before turning his pistol on himself. Evidence begins to pile up against Oakum, especially after he has apparently been blackmailing Mrs. Wyatt ($75,000 in three payments) for hiring him in the first place. Julia Thorpe was really responsible for Oakum's hiring (and has obviously been protecting him). Having been imprisoned as a pedophile, he has a criminal background. Revealing this information publicly would have a negative effect on the school. Sam Wyatt has advised his mother to call Oakum's bluff, not to pay the bribe. But in the course of the film, it is revealed that most of the former residents of Safe Harbor matured poorly (into drug pushers, prostitutes, and never-do-well types). Then Mrs. Wyatt herself is found strangled. This writer has taken you through most of the movie and will stop here so as to preclude any spoilers in the denouement. But there is a dialog involving Carly and another person past the half-way mark that reveals an important clue. See if you can find it. The movie is not particularly suspenseful, but it is watchable. TV movie was filmed in Vancouver and in British Columbia, Canada.

***SPOILERS*** Murder mystery that leads to a serial murderer who's targeting former Safe Harbor residents who were there because their parents had no use for them and in the case of Portland detective Carley Sagan, Tracy Gold,were the victims of a murder suicide when she was 12 years old. It's wen a number of former Safe Harbor inmates were found murdered with this weird satanic painting, of what looks like a flaming Red Devil, at the scene of the crime Carley and her partner Sgt.Joe Avery, Mitchell Kosterman, are assigned to the case. It soon becomes clear that a former worker who was exposed as a convicted sex offender the speedy and on his feet Ray Oakum, Scott Heindl, has been blackmailing the founder of the Safe Harbor Home for Wayward Boys and Girls Oliva Wyatt, Pamela Perry,for as much as $2,500.00 a shot to keep his mouth shut about the goings on in and out of the place. That's with a good number of Safe Harbors former residents turning to drugs booze and prostitution to make ends meet for them on the outside world.It soon becomes clear to Carley that Mrs. Wyatt's personal secretary Julia Thorpe, Stacy Grant, has been covering up for Oakum feeling that he's a nice man as well as being in love the guy whom she got the job, by covering up his criminal record, in the first place. with all this going on it's Mrs. Wyatt who becomes the killers next victim in that she stopped, on Carley and her partner Joe Avery advice, paying the blackmail hush money. It soon became evident that the fast and on his feet but slow in the brain Oakmun is not the killer after he was captured running from SCarley-who gunned him down-in him giving what looked like a death bed confession that he had nothing at all to do with the string of murderers, seven in all , that he's been accused of.***MAJOR MAJOR SPOILERS*** The shocking truth to all this turns out to be that Mrs. Wyatt's own son the handsome and extremely hairy, he has trouble seeing in him always having to keep his mop of hair from covering his face, Sam played by Steve Bacic who's a hedge fund manager who blew all his and his clients money in the stock market. It's Sam who did his mom in by Mrs. Wyatt cutting the creep out of her will and leaving all her money to her pet project the Safe Harbor Home for Wayward Boys and Girls. Sam who seemed normal at first now a total psycho, when he was discovered by Carley, that after failing to murder Carley he then tries to get her to blow him, with a gun not with what you may think, away only for her to put the cuffs on him and have the sobbing and totally destroyed Sam taken away in a police paddy wagon to later face justice for his crimes.

(There are Spoilers) Overcoming the both murder suicide of her mother and father young and traumatized Carly Segan, Tracy Gold, was taken in to the Safe Harbor home for disturbed and abuse children for both treatment and loving care. The person who runs as well as founded Safe Harbor Olivia Wyatt, Pamela Perry, is very proud of the work that her "safe home" provides for throw away young people, like Carly,but that's soon to end with devastating and deadly results.A young woman is found strangled on the Safe Harbor grounds who's later identifies as Kathy Easton a former resident of the home. It's also found next to Kathy's body painted on a brick wall a satanic symbol written in an eerie florescent and illuminating red paint. Put on the case Carly now a police detective together with her partner Joe Avery, Mitchell Kosterman, track down a number of leads that ultimately lead to a former Safe Harbor employee the all around handyman Ray Oakum ,Scott Heindl. It turns out that Oakum has a long record as a sex offended and either lied on his application for the job or was helped, by her keeping it from Mrs. Wyatt, by the homes personal director Julia Thorpe, Stacy Grant.As both Carly and Joe are trying to get to the bottom of the Kathy Easton murder another young woman is found dead, strangled, on the Safe Harbor grounds Suzanne Oswald who, like Kathy, just happened to have been a resident at the place when she was a young girl! As the evidence piles up against Oakum it's later found out that he's been blackmailing Mrs.Wyatt for some $75,000.00, in three installments, since he was canned by her from his job there. This payment is for Oakum to keep his mouth shut from exposing that Mrs. Wyatt hired him, a convicted pedophile, to work among mostly preteen-age girls and boys who are residents at Safe Harbor.It seems right from the start that money, not anything to do with a satanic cult, is the real reason for the murders committed at Safe Harbor. This fact is more then ever clarified then Mrs. Waytt himself is found strangled to death in the gazebo on the Safe Harbor grounds. It turns out that Mrs. Waytt was going to leave her entire fortune to Safe Harbor cutting everyone out including her son, and the guy that Carly has been having the hots for since she was a little girl at the place, Sam or better known to his friends as "Handsome Sam" Waytt, Steve Bacic. "Handeson Sam" besides being a loyal and loving son is also the very person who's been telling his now murdered mother Mrs. Wyatt not to pay off Oakum in his blackmail attempts and call his bluff. This may have had her killed in miscalculating the blackmailers real intentions. It's very unlikely Sam would have murdered his mother when he had in fact, besides being her son, nothing to gain from it but only end up throwing suspicion on himself. All the evidence is now focused on both the fugitive from justice Oakum and Julia Thorpe in working together to knock off both Mrs. Waytt and her son Sam, who would ultimately end up getting control of Safe Harbor, to get their hands on her money that's slated for Safe Harbor. The only problem in this whole confusing scenario is that Oakum, being tracked down and shot by Carly, who's now in the hospital with a slug in his chest claims that he never saw a penny of the missing $75,000.00, that Mrs. Waytt supposedly paid him off with, and in fact wasn't the one doing the blackmailing? Or even better yet was this whole scheme done by a third party who wanted to frame both Oakum and Thorpe and thus pave the way for their arrest and conviction of a crime that they didn't commit as he, or she, got away Scot-free?