Pooja Sharma
Rendered helpless after the unexpected disappearance of her friend, Celia finds herself at the receiving end of misfortune in Lifetime’s ‘The Venice Murders.’ Helmed by Peter Sullivan, the thriller movie chronicles the journey of Celia, a woman who leaves behind her life and job to study art in Italy. Arriving in the land of the Renaissance and the epicentre of the arts, Celia enjoys her newfound freedom with her roommate and boyfriend. However, an unexpected predicament soon taints her arrival in the picturesque country.
After her roommate disappears and her boyfriend becomes the prime suspect in her friend’s disappearance, Celia has no choice but to take things into her own hands, get to the truth, and save her friend. Starring Sophie Hopkins and Darcy Grey as the titular leads, the movie presents a story teeming with anticipation. The high-stakes situation involving life-threatening dangers leads viewers to question whether the story is based on real-life occurrences. As Celia embarks on the search for truth, several intense themes emerge. The menacing danger and the looming threat of kidnapping in a foreign land, therefore, led us to find out if Lifetime’s ‘The Venice Murders’ is based on true events.
The Venice Murders is Not Based on a True Story
‘The Venice Murders’ has been penned by screenwriters Robert Dean Klein and Peter Sullivan. The action thriller movie encompasses the mind-bending mania surrounding a kidnapping. With bodily harm and threat to life at its core, the Lifetime movie does not just pose a story teeming with mystery but also mirrors several life-like situations. The film follows the story of Celia, a happy-go-lucky woman who seeks another chance at her dreams and hopes.
However, her free-spirited life is impeded when she finds herself uncovering the truth behind her roommate’s disappearance. With no one to turn to, Celia has no choice but to enlist the help of her eccentric Aunt Rosa. As she teams up with her expat relative, who had estranged herself from the family decades before, Celia encounters several obstacles in her journey to truth.
The film resonates with life-like events as it revolves around kidnapping, a statistically probable event. Most recently, Italian authorities were searching for a 5-year-old Peruvian girl who was supposedly kidnapped from a hotel housing hundreds of illegal immigrants. So, even though the country is known for its safety, such events lead viewers to wonder what-if.
Losing her bearings, Celia is driven to more shock when the authorities suspect her boyfriend to be her roommate’s abductor. Statistically, most victims of kidnappings are lured in by someone they know. This additional detail to the story also leads viewers to perpetrate that the story is based on a true situation. However, despite the life-like depiction of disappearances, the story is still fictional. Given its fictitious origins, the creators of the movie had enough liberties to embellish the storyline. So, even though the story may seem to have life-like similarities, it is still borne in the minds of creators.
Read More: Best Lifetime Movies of All Time
