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Parents' Guide to

She Made Them Do It

By Tracy Moore, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 14+

Tawdry dramatization of real-life double murder.

Movie NR 2013 90 minutes
She Made Them Do It Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 15+

Based on 1 parent review

age 15+

She made them do it… extremely gory

In this film it shows a character shooting 2 people 1 time in the chest and the girl 1 times 1 in the breast and the other in the head the girls death is very graphic and very upsetting this is shown a few times but from different people and different views which makes it more graphic a girl almost died from poisoning someone pinches another girl brutally says “remember who helped you” this shows blood there are also sex scenes none but 1 is graphic the graphic sex scene shows sarah and her boyfriend having sex on a side of the house u see them kissing as she unbuckled his pants and he playfully sexually pushed her against the wall and u see her drop her panties no nudity is seen and it is implying sex and she moans graphically the other 2 are not graphic

This title has:

Too much violence
Too much sex

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (1 ):
Kids say (1 ):

SHE MADE THEM DO IT tries to have it both ways, and it ends up a muddled mess. Pender is a gifted manipulator of others who excels at playing victim; no, she's an innocent who got mixed up with the wrong crowd and made some bad choices.

Though movies like this make no attempt to educate or inform, they may do worse by deliberately misleading our understanding of the crimes committed where the victims' own innocence is in question. In news reports of the case, Pender was a secretary, not a drug dealer as the film depicts; the letter used to convict her was never found with her fingerprints, which is omitted in the film, and the crime scene never returned any of Pender's DNA, another fact left out in the movie. What's left, then, is a tawdry, sexed-up dramatization of a vixen who alternates between innocent and deviant; graphic reenactments of the murders in question; some Cinemax-style implied intercourse; and the lingering sense that justice likely will never be served here, nor will we gain much insight into the criminal mind. Not appropriate for young kids and, at best, a study in the sensationalist true-crime biopic for teens.

Movie Details

  • On DVD or streaming: February 28, 2013
  • Cast: Mackenzie Phillips , Jenna Dewan
  • Director: Grant Harvey
  • Inclusion Information: Female actors, Middle Eastern/North African actors
  • Studio: Lifetime
  • Genre: Drama
  • Topics: History
  • Run time: 90 minutes
  • MPAA rating: NR
  • MPAA explanation: TV-14
  • Last updated: June 19, 2023

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