Movie Review: Concrete Evidence - A Fixer Upper Mystery

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Good mystery, fun characters

Cons: It’s a Hallmark movie

The Bottom Line:

Hidden skeleton

Shannon must dig for answers

Fun, light mystery

“When I Bought the House, the Inspector Gave Me a Five Page List of all the Problems, but a Skeleton in the Dumb Waiter Wasn’t One of Them.”

Sometimes when reading or watching a mystery, you just know where dead body is going to pop up.  That was the case when I was watching Concrete Evidence, the second Fixer Upper Mystery movie from Hallmark.  Of course, the real fun comes in trying to piece together how the body got there, and that proved to be the case again here.

Shannon Hughes (Jewel) has just started the renovation on the house that writer Mac Sullivan (Colin Ferguson) has bought.  They are in the destruction phase, and Shannon has discovered that the dumb waiter in the house is wedged into place.  She gets it unstuck only to have it crash to the basement.  When Shannon goes down there, she makes a horrifying discovery – there’s a skeleton in the dumb waiter.

The skeleton is identified as the remains of Lily, a high school classmate of Shannon’s who disappeared after high school graduation.  Lily also happens to be the sister of Sean (Sean Rogerson), Shannon’s foreman.  At the time, everyone assumed that Lily had run away to Hollywood to become an actress, but it is clear now she was murdered.  Sean asks Shannon to find out what happened, and, since Mac has a bad case of writer’s block, he joins the unofficial investigation.  Can they figure out what happened?

As I said, the setup was very obvious, but the movie didn’t waste a lot of time getting us there, and the pace never lagged for the rest of the movie either.  I did suspect the killer early on, but I got so caught up in the story that I really didn’t care.  We have several people with very real motives, and that makes it fun.

Of course, this being a Hallmark movie, it does come with my standard cheese warning.  The acting and writing are okay, and if you remember what you are watching you’ll be fine.  But there’s nothing that’s going to win any awards here for sure.

That’s not to say the actors do a poor job at all.  In fact, I really grew to love some of the characters here, which meant I was rooting for them to not be the killer and to overcome some of the obstacles they faced as a result of what Shannon and Mac uncover.  And can I just saw how much I love the relationship between our two lead characters.

I’ve only read the first book in the series, and I don’t know how this compares to any of the plots in the books, but I certainly enjoyed it on its own.

So while I can’t speak to this movie as a fan of the books, I can speak to Concrete Evidence as a fan of mysteries.  I found it to be fun and entertaining.  It’s definitely worth taking a look when you want to enjoy something light.

Looking for this movie on DVD?  It's part of the Fixer Upper Mystery Collection.