The ominous nickname for the sports teams of Mattowa High School is the Vipers. In this rural outpost, Claire Porter and her daughter Sarah have arrived with Claire assuming the position of Assistant Principal at the school. When Sarah practices in the first basketball scrimmage for the girls' team, she is hit with a flying elbow to the mouth by the daughter of the coach. This should be a flagrant foul, as it appeared to be intentional and could have knocked out Sarah's teeth. But the coach merely writes the foul off as good, tough play.

In this harrowing tale, Sarah attends a welcoming party by the basketball team, then vanishes. Her frantic mom receives little support from the community. Only a sympathetic deputy in the police force senses the urgency in Sarah's disappearance. The entire team recounts for the sheriff a story that is far too pat and rehearsed. But sports are the lifeblood of the Mattawa. And the highly competitive Coach Simmons is an upstanding member in the community.

Above all else, the film offers a moving portrait of a mother's love for her daughter and her relentless effort to discover the truth about her disappearance, despite all the odds. The aesthetic choices of the filmmakers included beautiful still photographs of a majestic landscape, supported by lyrical scoring. The imagery worked in counterpoint to the tawdry story of a hazing ritual followed by what can only be termed attempted murder.

There were especially effective details in the scripting and characterization that evoked the horror of the secrets of the small town. A sleazy funeral director pays Claire a visit long before her daughter has been declared dead. The hard-as-nails girls' basketball coach recalls her experience in Iraq, where, on her first tour of duty, she was assaulted and considered herself a survivor. Both Claire and Sarah imagine a lullaby from the past, which the two characters sing as they are separated; it is as if they are connecting spiritually while apart. The ironic name of the spot where Sarah may have died is called Trusted Cliff.

At one point in the film, Coach Simmons reminds her daughter Kat that "when you've lost in your head, you've lost the game." In a grim struggle for survival to escape the apparent death sentence of having to live in a small town, human values have been skewed, and the mentality that produced the tragic hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials has co-opted human values in the modern age. On many levels, "Secrets of a Small Town" is a story of survival after having fallen into the viper pit.

Missing girl theme is not new. The worst of the story is it's not suspicious at all. The truth come out too soon and there's no surprise and disappointed to the audience. The script writing is totally a let down.

Don't listen to the bad reviews this is a fantastic thriller not predictable , good suspense i love it and i will see it again and it is a tv movie incredible