The second of four films from Blumhouse to appear on Amazon Prime has arrived and offers a look at how far a family will go to protect a secret.
In “The Lie” a divorced couple is pushed to the edge when their fifteen year old daughter Kayla (Joey King) admits to pushing her friend off a bridge in an argument while stopping in a remote area. The fact that nobody knows she was with them causes the father (Peter Sarasgaard), to cover it up and involves her mother Rebecca (Mireille Enos), in the deception. The fact that Rebecca is an attorney and her partner is out of town empowers them to create a narrative that Kayla never went to a planned Ballet retreat due to illness and has not seen her friend for days.
When the missing friends father Sam (Cas Anvar); arrives looking for his daughter the deception becomes bolder as the parents attempt to implicate Sam as an abusive father. As the lies compound questions arise from the local authorities who suspect all is not as it seems as the web of lies threatens to come crashing down.
The film has a good cast and some really great cinematography as the frozen landscapes add a since of chill and foreboding to the story.
The film unfolds at a very deliberate pace and lacks any horror or suspense for the most part as audiences are pretty clear they know what has happened and that the deceptions and subsequent actions will be discovered. The film then throws a very unexpected twist at the audience making things even more complicated and unsettling.
The cast is strong and the premise of how far would parents go to protect a child combined with the unaccountability of so many children today makes for an interesting premise. The film just needed more suspense to put it over the top.
3 stars out of 5
