“We Never Know How Many Days We Have.” “Especially on This Island.”
As I’ve been saying, I didn’t see how Mystery Island could become a franchise, and I’ve honestly struggled with all of them. So I wasn’t exactly excited when I sat down to watch House Rules, the latest in the Hallmark mystery movie series. Fortunately, it turned out to be quite entertaining.
Before we got further, a word of warning. This movie spoils the introduction of these characters. So, if you haven’t seen the original Mystery Island, don’t just sit down to watch this one. But that first movie was from 2023, so my guess is if you are interested in it, you’ve seen it by now.
Mystery Island is expanding. They’ve been partnered with Mystery Mountain, a company that does the same thing but in the mountains of Colorado. So that the new team can gain experience, they are coming to Mystery Island and putting on a mystery for the Island crew to make sure the mysteries they are writing are good.
All of this is happening as Dr. Emilia Priestly (Elizabeth Henstridge) is finally moving over full time from England. She’s hoping to see where things go with her partner in writing, Jason Trent (Charlie Weber), although she’s still hesitant about fully committing to a relationship with him, much to the disappointment of their boss, Jane Alcott (Kezia Burrows).
But, as these things tend to do, a real murder takes place on the first evening the Mountain team is on the Island. Worse yet, they get cut off from the mainland. Can Emilia and Jason figure out what is happening? Or will more murders happen?
I had to laugh at a line early on that gave us a number of the successful mystery weekends that the crew has hosted that were real murder free. I mean, they’ve got to be getting some kind of reputation, right?
This movie does have the usual issues that plague this series. We meet all the suspects and potential victims at the same time, and it is hard to keep their relationships straight. I’m not sure if it helped or hurt that the movie tries to match them up with their counterpart on Mystery Island. Honestly, I can only keep the three leads straight here.
Also, the movie didn’t really pull off the romantic subplot for me. Those scenes felt forced in the writing.
I’m not blaming the actors for this. The cast was uniformly good at bringing their characters and the dialogue to life.
The mystery itself was really well done. I’ll admit, there are parts that only work in a fictional setting, but I am willing to go along with it. I was impressed when we reached the end about how it had been pulled off and how the main characters figured it out.
House Rules is the best Mystery Island movie to date. If we get more of them in the future, I’m hopeful that this will be a sign of better things to come for the franchise.
The romantic subplot didn't bother me too much, but I agree it did feel forced. I think they'd be better as friends. But I also agree the mystery was good. This was my favorite one as well. :)
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