When Will ‘To Catch a Cheater’ Stream on Netflix?

To Catch a Cheater is an intense and deeply emotional thriller that arrives on Netflix on August 20, 2026, at 3:00 a.m. ET. The movie stars Kate Watson as a grieving mother who is desperately searching for clues to learn what really happened to her daughter. It was written by Rachel Morton and directed by Damián Romay, and has a running time of 1 hour and 27 minutes.

What Is ‘To Catch a Cheater’ About?: A Spoiler-Free Synopsis

To Catch a Cheater opens with a horrific scene of a mother facing her worst nightmare. The story immediately jumps back a week to introduce the characters and reveal what part they played in the deceased’s life. While the police conclude that Hannah’s death was an unfortunate accident, her mother, Monica, isn’t convinced that is the answer.

Monica’s husband, David, is concerned his wife might be spiraling and losing touch with reality. He tries to convince her that she needs to move on. This makes Monica even more determined to find answers, so she begins digging into what actually happened on the days leading up to the tragedy. It doesn’t take long for her to discover what she believes is proof of foul play.

The deeper Monica goes, the more conclusive her evidence seems to be. However, her husband, her friends, and even the police department consistently thwart her progress by offering alternative explanations. Is Monica just a grieving mother who refuses to accept the uncomfortable truth about her daughter, or was Hannah murdered? The film keeps you guessing about what really happened right up until the final minutes.

The Stars of ‘To Catch a Cheater’: Cast and Characters

To Catch a Cheater builds its tension on the relationship between the characters. Monica struggles with knowing who she can trust and what her daughter’s friends were really like. The emotional impact of this movie is generated by the actors who bring their characters to life with sincerity, compassion, and conviction.

  • Kate Watson: Monica, Hannah’s mother
  • Philip Boyd: David, Monica’s husband
  • Sheila Leason: Bridget, one of Monica’s closest friends
  • Jessie Pettit: Kim, one of Monica’s closest friends
  • Roy Lynam: Doug, Kim’s husband
  • Jordan Kennedy: Hannah, Monica’s daughter
  • Steven McCormack: Leo, Hannah’s older brother
  • Lily Bowen: Megan, one of Hannah’s best friends
  • Valentina Rivas: Charli, a friend who pushes Hannah to stay fun
  • Luke Omalza: Hunter, Hannah’s boyfriend

Exclusive Interview: Kate Watson on Playing Monica

Kate Watson is an accomplished actress with an impressive career that covers both film and television. She is a skilled storyteller who creates rich, multilayered characters that give her work a powerful emotional resonance. Entertaining Options asked Kate about playing Monica, her approach to acting, and the important themes driving To Catch a Cheater.

How did you find out about this role? What drew you to Monica?
The role came to me as an offer through a wonderful casting director who was already familiar with my work, and I was immediately drawn to the emotional circumstances surrounding Monica. The story moves quickly, but underneath the mystery is something very human: a mother trying to process the loss of her child.

It gave me the opportunity to explore a kind of grief I hadn’t taken on before and, honestly, one that frightened me a little. I can’t imagine a greater loss than losing a child, so I knew I needed to approach Monica with a lot of care.

What was it about Monica that made you feel like you could understand and connect to her?
I understood her refusal to abandon what she knew instinctively. Monica is surrounded by people telling her to accept a version of events that doesn’t feel true to her, but she continues listening to that internal voice.

I relate to that. I live very intuitively, and when something feels fundamentally wrong, I have a difficult time pretending otherwise.

Did you draw from any real-life experiences to inform your acting decisions?
I didn’t pull from a personal experience or try to equate anything in my life with the loss of a child. That kind of grief is too specific and profound. Beyond placing myself in those circumstances, I focused on how her grief sat within my body. Grief changes how you breathe, how you listen, and how you move.

At the beginning of the film, Monica appears relatively composed, but that’s quickly stripped away. Physically, I found my posture becoming less controlled and my body feeling heavier and more guarded.

You always bring a quiet intensity to your roles, especially with Monica. There’s so much going on and so much that gets the viewer’s blood pressure rising, but Monica is a rock. Despite her husband, the police, her friends, and basically everyone pushing her to stop, she keeps moving forward. But it’s an even and controlled journey. Was that your decision to keep her so grounded and strong?
I never really thought of Monica as quiet. Her grief is always present, but she can’t give herself over to it completely because she’s still unsettled and seeking the truth. I think what reads as control is really her conviction.

She’s a mother who has already endured the unimaginable, so the resistance she encounters from everyone around her becomes almost secondary. What can they possibly threaten her with that is greater than what she has already lost?

There were certainly takes where I explored more outwardly explosive emotion, especially in some of the close-ups, but perhaps the quieter moments served the story better.

She may appear strong, but the grief is never behind her. It’s beside her in every scene.

“Life doesn’t stop simply because someone is grieving. The world doesn’t pause until you’re ready to return.”

There are twists and turns every few minutes in this movie. When you were first reading the script, what were your thoughts and feelings?
My first thought was that it was incredibly propulsive. Every time Monica seems closer to an answer, the ground moves underneath her again.

That also felt very true to life. Life doesn’t stop simply because someone is grieving. The world doesn’t pause until you’re ready to return. Monica is carrying this enormous loss while circumstances continue to change around her and require her to respond.

And as she does, we see the erosion of the relationships that have defined her life. Her connections with her family and friends begin to shift, and the people she once believed she understood become increasingly unfamiliar. She’s forced to confront the possibility that she may not have known them as well as she thought, including her own child, and that realization is devastating.

It gives the twists an emotional weight beyond the suspense. Monica isn’t only uncovering the truth about her daughter’s death; she’s also losing her understanding of the life she believed she had.

How did you get into character before “Action!” Was there a trigger that turned you into Monica?
There wasn’t one particular trigger. It was more about carrying her circumstances with me throughout the day, knowing that every morning Monica wakes up to the same impossible reality: her daughter is gone.

Even when a scene centered on a clue, a confrontation, or a new piece of information, that loss was still underneath it. Once the scene began, it was about being present and letting the circumstances affect me.

How close are you to Monica? What are you like in real life?
Thankfully, I have a little more lightness, curiosity, and creativity in my life than Monica has room for in the film. Like her, though, I tend to trust my instincts and can be tenacious.

It was also important to me that Monica felt fallible. She doesn’t see herself as the perfect mother and regrets not always being as present as she wished. There’s real honesty in facing the parts of ourselves we’d rather not see, even when it’s incredibly painful. With each passing year, I’ve come to believe that kind of honesty allows us to understand ourselves more fully and continue to grow.

Do you have any behind-the-scenes moments or memories that you’d like to share?
We filmed in Florida, and it rained nearly every day. Because so many scenes were meant to take place outside, locations often had to change very quickly.

One scene in particular was a three-page monologue that I loved. It was emotional, beautifully written, and one of the reasons I wanted to do the film. We were supposed to shoot it outside near the beach, but after several hours of trying to work around the weather, we moved into the diner where we were filming later that night.

The diner was still operating, so I had only a take or two to deliver the monologue while food was being served, phones were ringing, and people were talking around us. It was one of those wonderfully unglamorous filmmaking moments where you have to tune everything else out and trust the work.

Have you changed anything in your approach to acting since you started?
My approach has evolved, particularly in how I relate to the camera. I think that relationship has to be built on trust. You learn that the camera sees far more than you realize, and that the work is in the specificity, the preparation, and the listening. You allow yourself to be affected by what’s happening, but once those things are alive, you don’t need to push the result.

“There’s real honesty in facing the parts of ourselves we’d rather not see, even when it’s incredibly painful.”

Did you have any early misconceptions about filmmaking in the beginning of your career?
I think one thing I underestimated early on was how little autonomy an actor has over the finished performance. A performance isn’t created independently. Filmmaking is collaborative and fluid. Your work is shaped by the actor opposite you, the director, and how the scene is lit and framed. You have to arrive prepared, but remain available. 

Ultimately, you have to surrender the result. The take that’s chosen, the edit, the sound mix and the final look of the film are outside your control as an actor. You bring yourself fully to the moment, and then let the film become what it becomes.

What have been some of your favorite characters to play so far? Why?
Monica is certainly one of them because the emotional stakes were so profound, yet the story required her to remain active, intelligent, and constantly moving forward.

Another is a character in an upcoming film who means a great deal to me. She couldn’t be easily defined. She was complicated, dark, messy, ferocious, and at times duplicitous. She was an absolute force. There was real humanity in all of those contradictions.

In general, I’m drawn to women who can’t be reduced to one quality. I love characters who may appear composed or even unknowable, yet have enormous emotional and psychological movement underneath. I’m less interested in whether a character is traditionally likable than whether she feels truthful and compelling.

What kind of character or role interests you that you haven’t had a chance to play yet?
I’d love to do a period drama. There’s something fascinating about playing a woman whose emotional life is shaped by the language, expectations, and social structures of another time.

I’m also drawn to psychologically complex thrillers and grounded dramas. I’d love to play a woman whose morality is difficult to categorize, someone who may be dangerous but still deeply understandable. I’d be interested in playing a detective, a spy, or a political figure, particularly in a story where the audience’s understanding of her continues to evolve.

Ultimately, I’m interested in roles that ask something new of me and don’t reveal the entire woman at first glance.

I have watched this movie a few times, and it’s very hard for me not to feel strong emotions about the characters who aren’t who they seem to be. Is it hard for you to forget who the real good guy or bad guy is when shooting a scene? How do you avoid letting something slip that might give away a plot twist?

You have to approach every scene in the moment. I’m never a step ahead of the character; I have to be exactly where she is, knowing only what she knows.

I also try not to think in terms of who is ultimately good or bad. If I stay present in the scene and respond truthfully to the person in front of me, the larger twists remain hidden without having to consciously conceal anything.

Watching this movie multiple times, I noticed so many things that I had missed in the first viewing. Do you think people should watch movies more than once to really catch all the little plot nuances? Or should a movie stand on its own and be a good enough experience after just one viewing?
I think both things can be true. A film should work emotionally and narratively the first time you see it. The audience shouldn’t have to study it to have a satisfying experience. 

But I love films that deepen on a second viewing. The first time, much of your attention is devoted to following the story and understanding where it’s taking you. Once you know that, you have more space to notice the visual details and subtleties in the performances.

Especially with a thriller, a second viewing can bring the craft into focus. The first gives you the experience of discovery. The second allows you to appreciate how the story is constructed, along with the nuances and underlying themes woven throughout it.

“One of the most painful realities surrounding suicide is the distance that can exist between someone’s external life and their internal experience. A person can be deeply loved while still carrying pain that those closest to them don’t fully understand.”

The title of this movie doesn’t really focus on what the film is about, or it might lead people to think it’s a different kind of movie. What can you share, without giving too much away, about what the movie’s real focus is?
I agree. The title suggests romantic infidelity, but the film explores betrayal in a much broader sense: the harm caused when truth is withheld, and how that can fracture our relationships with others and with ourselves.

It touches on bullying, suicide, and grief, but at its core, I think it’s about how vital honesty is within our relationships, and what happens when we stop being truthful.

Why will people love this movie?
It’s a fast-moving mystery with a real emotional center. There are enough turns to keep the audience questioning everyone, but underneath the suspense is something very human: the need to understand someone we love.

The film entertains, but it also leaves you with questions. I hope it makes people reflect on how we show up for one another, the things we overlook, and the consequences of doing so. I think that gives the film resonance beyond the final reveal.

There are a few new and exciting things coming up for you. Would you like to share any of these new ventures?
I’m really looking forward to To Catch a Cheater arriving on Netflix on August 20th. Having the film reach such a wide audience is incredibly meaningful, particularly because I think so many people will recognize parts of themselves in Monica.

I’m also continuing to develop my work as a writer, which has become an increasingly important part of my creative life.

There are a few acting projects and conversations I can’t speak about publicly yet, but I’m genuinely excited about where things are heading.

Is there anything we missed that you’d like to bring up?
A slight spoiler ahead, but I think it’s important to speak carefully about the way the film handles suicide.

Monica’s refusal to believe that her daughter died by suicide is specific to this story and to what her intuition is telling her. But that shouldn’t suggest that a parent or loved one will always know when someone is struggling, or that disbelief means the explanation must be wrong.

One of the most painful realities surrounding suicide is the distance that can exist between someone’s external life and their internal experience. A person can be deeply loved while still carrying pain that those closest to them don’t fully understand.

The film arrives on Netflix shortly before September, which is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. It’s a subject I care deeply about, and one we need to discuss with more compassion and far less judgment.

The same is true of bullying. It has always existed, but online platforms have given it a reach, permanence, and anonymity that can make it especially devastating.

Those themes are present throughout the film without overwhelming the mystery. Beyond the suspense, the film is a reminder to pay closer attention to one another, to take private suffering seriously, and to understand that something that may seem small to one person can have an enormous impact on someone else.

Is ‘To Catch a Cheater’ a Good Movie?

Within the first 60 seconds, To Catch a Cheater grabs you. You want to know what happened. Less than fifteen minutes later, you find out what happened. But then, you want to know why. You’re invested in Monica’s story. You need answers, just like she does.

That’s the magic of this movie. Every time you think Monica has uncovered irrefutable proof and solved the mystery, she encounters a frustrating new setback. A twist. You realize that what she has learned is yet again only part of the truth, so you’re eager to go all in with her and forge ahead to get answers.

Monica is a strong, smart character who is carrying immeasurable grief. She’s someone you can understand, respect, and champion. 

However, no matter how compelling a story is, it won’t come to life without talented actors. Kate Watson is a sublime artist who brings sincerity to every role. Every inflection in her voice, every little trait she displays on screen blossoms from within the character. You know who Monica is. You recognize her because she’s genuine. And that’s why this movie is worth watching. Kate pulls you in, gets you to care, and makes To Catch a Cheater an emotionally rewarding experience.

To Catch a Cheater arrives on Netflix on August 20, 2026, at 3:00 a.m. ET.

Follow Kate on Instagram to keep up with her career.

All photos courtesy of Kate Watson.