Once again, a Lifetime movie is topping the charts on Netflix.
asserted
movie → top → Netflix
This time, it’s a 2026 thriller called The Seemingly Perfect Family.
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it → ’ → ?
The Seemingly Perfect Family began streaming on Netflix on Tuesday, and quickly shot to the top of the streamer’s Top 10 Trending Movie Titles list.
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Family → begin → list
The film, which was directed by Lisa France, stars Rylee Reagan as an 18-year-old girl who ages out of the foster system and scams her way into a high-paying job as a live-in nanny for a wealthy couple.
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who → direct → couple
But she soon learns that working for these people is far more dangerous than being unemployed.
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working → learn → people
If that sounds familiar, yes, it’s basically the plot of The Housemaid, a much better movie, based on a 2022 novel, that you can watch streaming right now on Starz.
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you → sound → Starz
But unlike The Housemaid movie, The Seemingly Perfect Family claims that it was inspired by a true story.
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it → claim → story
What’s that about?
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that → ’ → What
The Seemingly Perfect Family movie claims, via text on screen at the beginning of the movie to be “inspired by true events.”
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movie → claim → events
However, no one involved in the movie has said what, specifically, those true events are.
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events → involve → movie
And during the end credits of the movie, the usual legal disclaimer is displayed that “the characters and events of this motion picture are fictitious.
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characters → display → picture
Any similarities to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental and not intended.”
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similarities → live → persons
So why does the movie claim to be inspired by true events?
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movie → claim → events
It’s possible that, while the characters and events are made up, the concept was partially inspired by the true story of Sophie Lionnet, a 21-year-old French au pair who was tortured and murdered in 2017 by the London couple, Ouissem Medouni and Sabrina Kouider, who employed her.
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who → ’ → her
That said, if this is the story that inspired The Seemingly Perfect Family movie, the movie made a lot of changes from the true story.
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movie → say → story
According to a report done by the BBC, Sophie Lionnet was a young French girl, who moved from her home in Troyes, in north-east France, to the United Kingdom in January 2016, when she was just 20 years old, in order to improve her English.
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she → accord → English
Soon after, she got a job as a live-in nanny, working for a French couple who lived in southwest London, named Sabrina Kouider and Ouissem Medouni.
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who → get → London
Lionnet worked for Sabrina Kouider and Ouissem Medouni, caring for their two young boys, for 18 months.
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Lionnet → work → months
According to a report from The Independent, she was essentially a prisoner during those months, fielding threats, starvation, and physical abuse from her employers.
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she → accord → employers
“Other local nannies observed that Ms Lionnet seemed to think it was normal that she was barely paid, and dropped hints over time that she was scared, while a fish and chip shop owner recalled her grabbing food as if starving,” Independent reporter Lizzie Dearden wrote.
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Dearden → observe → food
Michael Cromer, the fish and chip shop owner, told the BBC at that Lionnet once told him she was beaten for small mistakes.
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she → tell → mistakes
“Once she said Sabrina beat her…
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Sabrina → say → her
I asked why, and she said she had dropped the butter.”
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she → ask → butter
Neighbors finally called authorities in September of 2017, when they detected a strong, unpleasant smell emanating from Kouider and Medouni’s backyard bonfire.
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they → call → bonfire
Medouni claimed he was “cooking sheep,” but firefighters discovered Lionnet’s burnt body.
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firefighters → claim → body
In the court case that followed, authorities uncovered filmed recordings over the course of 12 days, leading up to Lionnet’s murder, in which Kouider and Medouni brutally tortured Lionnet, while interrogating her about a supposed relationship with Kouider’s ex-boyfriend, Mark Walton, the founder of a band called Boyzone.
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Kouider → follow → band
In the trial, the court was told Kouider was obsessed with her ex, and harbored a delusion that Lionnet was in cahoots with Walton, in order to frame her for crimes that would lose her custody of her and Walton’s son.
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that → tell → her
She made a series of bizarre, unsubstantiated claims, including that Lionnet obtained drugs from Walton, drugged Kouider’s children, and sexually abused them.
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Lionnet → make → them
According to the BBC report, torture methods included Kouider and Medouni dunking Lionnet’s head in water, hitting her with an electric cable, and beating her badly enough to have five broken ribs and a fractured breast bone.
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Kouider → accord → ribs
Under this extreme duress and abuse—facing threats of rape, prison, and more physical abuse—Kouider and Medouni obtained an illegitimate “confession” from Lionnet that she had a sexual relationship with Walton, and that she had drugged Medouni and sexually assaulted him.
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she → face → him
After obtaining this illegitimate “confession,” the couple murdered Lionnet in their bath tub, and burned her body in their backyard.
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couple → obtain → backyard
Kouider and Medouni both tried to pin the blame for the other, each saying they were asleep at the time of the murder.
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they → try → murder
In the trial, Walton testified that he had never met Lionnet in his life.
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he → testify → life
He also testified that told that Kouider would “flip” during their “turbulent” two-year relationship.
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Kouider → testify → relationship
Kouider and Medouni were convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.
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Kouider → convict → prison
Their lawyers appealed the length of the sentence, and that appeal was rejected in 2019.
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appeal → appeal → 2019
The Aporia
