Parents' Guide to The Seemingly Perfect Family

Movie 2026 NR 87 minutes
The Seemingly Perfect Family movie poster: Three serious people in front of a red backdrop.

Common Sense Media Review

Barbara Shulgasser-Parker By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker , based on child development research. How do we rate?

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age 13+

Young nanny uncovers dark secrets; violence, strong peril.

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Parents Need to Know

Why Age 13+?

Any Positive Content?

  • The Seemingly Perfect Family: Woman with headset looks emotional in a helicopter.
  • The Seemingly Perfect Family: Woman and man in a kitchen, looking concerned at another person.
  • The Seemingly Perfect Family: Woman with long hair holding a blue smartphone, focused expression.

Parent and Kid Reviews

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What's the Story?

In THE SEEMINGLY PERFECT FAMILY, foster child Lexi (Rylee Reagan) turns 18, and her facility tosses her out without a job or a place to stay. Desperate, Lexi snags a nanny job with a wealthy family under false pretenses. That treachery comes back to bite her when it turns out she's taken the worst au pair job in America. Dad is Daniel (Bourke Floyd), an ever-smiling pilot who is constantly soothing the brittle edges of his high-powered executive wife, Chelsea (Anne Neugent), who has issues of her own. Chelsea soon disappears, and it becomes clear that the smarmy Daniel is much more than just a creep.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say : Not yet rated
Kids say : Not yet rated

This is a plodding, poorly-acted thriller that ought to be tense but mostly meanders from one obvious step to the next. How odd that the filmmakers chose to open on a scene set in the main character Lexi's as-yet-unknown future, revealing our nanny heroine caring for a baby while chained to the floor in a dank basement. Hmm. Looks like the new, well-paying job wasn't exactly what Lexi bargained for. We carry this coming threat with us as—jumping back in time to several weeks earlier, the girl is ejected from foster care into an uncaring world. It stays with us as her female employer reveals herself to be an alcoholic, and as the male employer proves to be creepy and dangerous.

Strangely, although the wife accuses her husband of having a sexual interest in Lexi, with the exception of a hands-on flying lesson, there's hardly a moment of sexuality in the movie, rendering the dad's actions—chaining, kidnapping—to be without meaning or reason.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the way the movie builds tension. Do you think it's helpful or a hindrance to see the action jump weeks ahead in the movie's earliest moments to reveal Lexi in chains?

  • When it's clear where a movie plot is going, can it be fun to watch anyway, or does the obviousness ruin the fun?

  • The movie is about domestic tension coming to a violent conclusion, but it doesn't tell us anything about the violent person's past. Do you imagine the crimes committed here are the perpetrator's first, or would it make sense that the person has a violent past unmentioned in the movie?

Movie Details

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The Seemingly Perfect Family movie poster: Three serious people in front of a red backdrop.

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