Fed up with the lack of family-friendly movies available on streaming services like Google Play and AppleTV, homeschooling dad Brett Monk teamed up with a group of creative homeschoolers and recent homeschooling grads to create an independent mystery film that was intriguing enough for kids but clean enough for family movie night.
The result was Mount Hideaway Mysteries: Exes and Oh No’s. Here’s why our family loved it and what it’s inspired us to do.
I received a free rental of Mount Hideaway Mysteries: Exes and Oh No’s for review purposes and I was compensated for my time. All opinions are my own and I am not required to post a positive review.
The need for clean family-friendly films
I remember long, hot summer days when I was a kid. Parental supervision wasn’t the constant force that it is today. It was perfectly normal back then for a group of kids to spend the better part of the summer hanging out with each other, finding ways to entertain ourselves until our parents came home from work.
In our neighborhood, there was a little video store (remember those?) where you could rent five movies for five days for five dollars. It was a pretty sweet deal. My friends and I would each contribute a dollar and pick a movie, and then we’d whip through them all in one or two days. It was the pre-Internet era version of Netflix-binging.
We watched so many old comedies and mysteries, dramas and romances. I can’t ever remember, though, watching movies that made me cringe at their content, even if there was a parent in the room!
Fast forward twenty-five years or so, and I’ve pretty much given up on watching movies and TV. It’s nearly impossible for me to find content that I’m comfortable watching alone, let alone with my children. Profanity, gore, and gratuitous sexual situations and innuendo are now the norm, not the exception.
Even movies that are created for and marketed to kids have content in them that makes me uncomfortable. For the most part, I find it easier to avoid watching this distasteful content than trying to sift through it to find the best stuff.
Finding Movies for Family Movie Night
As luck would have it, though, everyone else in my family LOVES to watch movies, so I’m always on the lookout for clean, family-friendly films we can enjoy together. I’ve been known to troll Common Sense Media reading reviews for every movie on Netflix trying to find something with an acceptable combination of green dots.
Brett Monk is not a stranger to these issues. A former pastor and multimedia producer, he, too, was frustrated with what he saw on his television screen. After meeting homeschooling grad Mikayla Mulgrew Leybovich on a movie set, Monk was inspired to work with homeschoolers to create feature-film length content that families could enjoy together.
He partnered with Leybovich to create the story that would become Mount Hideaway Mysteries: Exes and Oh No’s. Their goal was two-fold. In addition to making an entertaining murder mystery with strong female characters, they also wanted to demonstrate the business model for community-based filmmaking as a possible career option for homeschoolers.
Watch my interview with Brett Monk, co-creator of Mount Hideaway Mysteries: Exes and Oh No’s, to hear about his inspiration for the film and what he hopes you’ll take away from it.
What we enjoyed about Mount Hideaway Mysteries: Exes and Oh No’s
A few weeks ago, we got together with another homeschooling family and watched Mount Hideaway Mysteries: Exes and Oh No’s for a double family movie night. Although the movie is recommended for 12+ (due to the murder mystery plot), we had eight kids from two to twelve watching it. Though the younger kids didn’t necessarily grasp the plot, neither were they frightened, as all the fight scenes and references to murder were done in an understated way. It sort of reminded me of watching Murder She Wrote or another classic TV mystery.
Hands down our favorite characteristic of the film was its positive portrayal of homeschoolers. Homeschooling is deliberately woven into the plot in a way that will delight homeschooled children. My children absolutely loved it when Bethany Shanholtz, the movie’s main character, kicks a gun out of a bad guy’s hand.
He asks her, “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
To which she replies, “I was homeschooled.”
Even though most of our friends are also homeschooling families, our kids still face negative stereotypes of homeschooling in their day-to-day lives. Many people assume they sit around in their pajamas all day doing nothing. The pajama part might be true, but there’s rarely time for sitting around! It was great to see characters who’d been homeschooled working really cool jobs such as spy/detective, veterinarian/crime scene investigator, and home renovator.
We also loved the lack of special effects, fancy technology, and over the top hair and makeup. Mount Hideaway Mysteries is distinctively unHollywood, and we loved that about it. It was refreshing to see women in a film with regular hair, clothes, and makeup, though we did wonder once or twice why Bethany didn’t change into some more practical shoes!
Finally, we loved that the film was a community-based initiative. Mount Hideaway was created by Virginia filmmakers with a cast and crew from the local Virginia/MD/DC area. Many of the film’s locations were offered up by members of the community who wanted to help out with the production. You really get the feeling that the story is set in an actual small town where everybody knows everybody and is part of something that is bigger than themselves.
Why We’re Inspired by this Cute Family Movie
Our family is really into writing and creating original theatrical content. My two oldest daughters have performed in musicals each year since they were about four and two years ago, when they were eight and ten, they started their own theatre troupe, writing original musicals and producing them in our backyard with a group of friends each summer.
While they’ve always wanted to pursue playwriting and acting as careers, I’ve been quite hesitant to let them push it too far. As a family, we’re not all that interested in the lifestyle required of professional performers.
Though we’ve been writing and staging plays for a while now, it’s never really occurred to us that we could—with a relatively small budget—write and produce an original feature-length film and make it available for public consumption.
When I explained to my kids that the actors in the movie were not only responsible for writing and creating the films but were also homeschooling graduates, the wheels in their heads started turning immediately. “We want to do this, too!” they all agreed.
Honestly, the idea of having the creative control to make and produce an independent film that aligns with your family’s goals and values is pretty exciting. I think Monk and his Mount Hideaway crew might be onto something pretty special here.
Check out Mount Hideaway Mysteries for Your Next Family Movie Night
Mount Hideaway Mysteries: Exes and Oh No’s is available on the following streaming platforms:
- Apple TV
- Google Play
- Amazon Video (US and UK only)
Let’s support other homeschoolers by watching their content and spreading the word. Use the buttons on the side of this page to tell others about the film on social media then click below to check the movie out now.
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Sophie Agbonkhese is a writer, homeschooling mother of four, and a recovering overachiever (who occasionally relapses). She is the founder of My Cup Runs Over, a site dedicated to helping busy women simplify and enrich their lives. When she’s not writing or debugging websites, Sophie spends her time reading, dancing, bullet journaling, reading, gardening, listening to audiobooks, and striving fruitlessly to have a clean house for at least five minutes.