Guilty at 17 (2014)
About
A teenager is overwhelmed by guilt after the lie she told to support a friend destroys an innocent man.
Traci Scott backs up her friend Devon Cavanor's accusation of sexual assault against a teacher. The account is false, but it is believed, and the consequences run well beyond what either girl imagined when they started.
When the accused teacher is found dead in an apparent suicide, Traci is left carrying the weight of what her lie set in motion, and facing the question of whether to tell the truth once the damage is already done.
Guilty at 17 (2014) is part of Christine Conradt's long-running "at 17" cycle of Lifetime television films, each a self-contained story about a teenage girl whose life is derailed by a single event.
Ending explained
The death of chemistry teacher Gilbert Adkins is not the suicide it first appears to be. Devon's accusation was a cover story from the start: her father had promised her a car for good exam results, and her boyfriend Jay Allerson stole the test questions from Adkins's laptop and then destroyed it. Accusing Adkins was a way of discrediting him before he could work out what had happened.
Adkins's daughter June Gailey does not believe her father killed himself. The suicide note left in his car was typed, and she finds no trace of it on his computer. She takes a job as a substitute teacher at his school to find out what the girls know, and it emerges that Jay killed Adkins with an overdose of a sedative and staged the scene at the bridge.
June wins Traci's trust and persuades her to tell the truth. When Traci warns Devon that she is going to confess, Jay runs her off the road as she cycles to the hospital to tell her parents, but she survives. Devon then tries to save herself by telling June that the whole scheme was Jay's, and Jay turns up armed to dispute it.
The film ends with Devon pleading guilty, which is where the title comes from, and with Adkins's name cleared.
Where to Watch
- Premiered on Lifetime (United States), July 20, 2014
- Search Amazon for Guilty at 17
Details
Director: Anthony Lefresne
Writer/Screenplay: Christine Conradt, David DeCrane, Douglas Howell
Producer: Curtis Crawford, Donald Osborne, Stefan Wodoslawsky
Running time: 90 minutes
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Released: July 20, 2014
Music Composer: Richard Bowers
Cast
- Erin Sanders as Traci Scott
- Chloe Rose as Devon Cavanor
- Zack Peladeau as Jay Allerson
- Alex Paxton-Beesley as June Gailey
- Catherine Dent as Melanie Scott
- Michael Woods as Don Scott
- Rob Stewart as Gilbert Adkins
- Vanessa Morgan as Leigh
- Allison Graham as Rona Ashton
- Jefferson Brown as Steve Dawson
- Kevin Bundy as Gary Foster
- Lindsay Gerro as Nurse Linda
- Rick Burchill as Irving Cavanor
- Sarah McVie as Detective
- Sophie Gendron as Aileen
- Xavier Sotelo as Detective Morris
- Stefan Keyes as Journalist
Franchise
One of nine Lifetime films written by Christine Conradt under the "... at 17" title pattern:
- Dead at 17 (2008)
- Accused at 17 (2009)
- Betrayed at 17 (2011)
- Stalked at 17 (2012)
- Missing at 17 (2013)
- Guilty at 17 (2014)
- Pregnant at 17 (2016)
- Murdered at 17 (2018)
- Zombie at 17 (2018)
Related
Trivia
- The film is the sixth of nine Lifetime titles written by Christine Conradt whose names follow the pattern "... at 17".
- It is the only film in the series to have its own English Wikipedia article.
- IMDb lists the film under the shorter title Guilty, while The Movie Database and most other sources use Guilty at 17.
- Vanessa Morgan went on to play Toni Topaz in Riverdale, a series that also featured Zoé De Grand Maison from Pregnant at 17 (2016).
- It is the first entry in the cycle produced by Curtis Crawford and Donald Osborne, who went on to make Pregnant at 17 (2016).
Critical Reception
Guilty at 17 is the entry in the cycle that deals most directly with the cost of a false accusation, and it puts the consequences on the girl who told the lie rather than on an outside threat. On IMDb the film holds an average user rating of approximately 5.6 out of 10 from around 665 votes.
Reviews
- IMDb users give the film an average rating of approximately 5.6 out of 10 from around 665 votes.
Links
Production
Guilty at 17 was directed by Anthony Lefresne from a screenplay credited to Christine Conradt, David DeCrane and Douglas Howell. Curtis Crawford, Donald Osborne and Stefan Wodoslawsky produced, with Christine Conradt, Neil Bregman, Pierre David and Tom Berry as executive producers. Cinematography was by Bill St. John, editing by Jordan Jensen and music by Richard Bowers.
The film marks the point at which the series moved to the Canadian production unit that made the rest of the cycle, the same team behind Pregnant at 17 (2016), Murdered at 17 (2018) and Zombie at 17 (2018).
The "at 17" series
Christine Conradt wrote nine Lifetime television films sharing the "... at 17" title pattern, running from Dead at 17 (2008) through to Murdered at 17 (2018) and Zombie at 17 (2018). The films are not a continuing story and share no characters; what links them is a common formula, in which an otherwise ordinary teenage girl makes one decision, or suffers one piece of bad luck, that exposes her to adult danger.
Guilty at 17 is the sixth in the sequence, following Missing at 17 (2013) and preceding Pregnant at 17 (2016).
