The Lie Review: An Upsetting Look at Which Victims Get Justice
Amazon Prime’s The Lie is upsetting, unredeemable, and filled with unlikeable characters
The Lie premiered on Amazon Prime Tuesday October, 6th starring Joey King from The Act, with Peter Sarsgaard and Mireille Enos as her parents.
The trio command the majority of the plot with their selfish and frankly removed decision making while the secondary characters reap only the consequences of those actions.
The Lie follows divorced parents, who enter into a series of lies and diversions in order to protect their only daughter Kayla after she confesses to killing her best friend Britney. The lies begin to topple over when they decide to pin the death on Britney’s father Sam, and involve law enforcement whom they are positive they can outsmart.
If I have learned anything from being a true crime junkie, I know that the criminal who thinks they are smarter than the police officers are rarely actually smarter than the police officers.
Joey King’s performance as Kayla is slightly reminiscent of her performance in The Act — immature, selfish, and at times incredibly sadistic. We see that behavior most when she is nearly confronted by Britney’s father Sam and in her panic has an asthma attack.
Her mother Rebecca finds her on the ground, and when she and her ex-husband Jay start arguing about the lies they’ve spun Kayla begins to panic.
Instead of Jay and Rebecca seeing this very clear display of regret and seeing the error of their ways and the hoops they jumped through to protect their daughter, decide to go to the police with what they know, they comfort Kayla assuring her that despite her telling them she killed Britney on purpose, it was an accident. Furthermore, that it was an accident none of them will ever speak of again.
Kayla shows swings of empathy and indifference for the death of her best friend. As well, she seems to have no autonomy over her own decisions or why she makes them, at first calling the death an accident, then blaming her father for thinking Britney was pretty and finally blaming Britney herself.
For a character who is three years away from college the behavior makes one wonder if she is suffering from something mentally and if that were the case, would there not be room for an insanity plea?
The only redeeming characters are secondary to the family and the web of lies they are willing to spin to assure their daughter faces no responsibility for her actions. The best performance by far is that of Sam, Britney’s father, played by Cas Anvar.
Throughout the entirety of the film, Sam is the only character who reacts to the news he is given. He’s also the only parent in the film who wants Kayla to take responsibility for what happened to his daughter.
As the film progresses it seems that there is no possible way Jay and Rebecca can possibly keep the charade up, especially when they willingly involve the police into the investigation in an attempt to pin Britney’s murder on her father. It seems that the more they convince each other they are going to get away with covering it up, the more insane their cover-up becomes until finally, they kill Sam themselves.
In a vain attempt to course-correct, or perhaps some way to surprise the audience after a majority of time being spent watching Kayla act like she hasn’t confessed to murdering her best friend, Jay and Rebecca stare at each other lovingly while openly discussing how to cover up not one but two murders, and the only character reacting to anything realistically, Britney shows up very much alive.
The return of Britney unravels, the truth of what happened between her and Kayla as what was meant to be a harmless white lie to help Britney sneak away to spend some time with her boyfriend.
When confronted, Kayla resorts to her old standby of childish panic in which she blames the entire initial plan on Britney, her participation only continuing after enjoying having both her mom and dad under the same roof, and begs her parents not to leave her.
As the newly reunited family gather for a group hug, and sirens begin to approach the screen goes to black and the audience is left to decide what happened to them. It’s hard to pin down exactly what the writers intention was with this movie.
Could it be to make a trio of main characters so incredibly unlikeable that the viewer is left screaming at the television of someone, anyone, to catch them in their thinly constructed lies?
Not unnoticed was the role of people of color in the film and how they are used by the white characters. While a mostly white cast is unfortunately considered the “norm” in Hollywood, The Lie seems blatant in its disrespect of characters of color and how they are used by the white characters as collateral damage in their twisted version of the truth. Britney and her father Sam could be said to be the only characters of color anywhere near the forefront of this film.
This is made even more clear by one of the detectives on Britney’s case, a white male, whose first question for Sam is where he is from, and when Sam becomes defensive of the detective’s questioning becomes domineering and very nearly abusive in his action.
Not only is Sam the only innocent bystander of the entire film he is also killed needlessly, and in a graphic and triggering scene, by Jay and Rebecca’s near narcissistic need to shield their daughter from her own options.
Britney herself, who this story should focus much more on than it actually does is not only left alone to deal with the murder of her father, but is given no justice for the actions of Kayla, or her parents.
She is also accused, without being present to defend herself, of being “high risk” for running away from home more than once, and ogled at by the very same detective who racial profiles her father. Both Britney and her father could have been rich characters, who are used as pawns by this family and could have ended the story better than they began it.
Overall, The Lie, is frustrating in its refusal to redeem any of the main characters, disappointing in its treatment of the victims of those characters’ actions and lackluster in the final twist.
Refusal for the main characters to face the consequences of their actions almost romanticizes the abusive kind of relationship trope of killing for those you love and ultimately fell flat.
What did you think of The Lie? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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The Lie is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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Carly Herriges
Carly Herriges is a writer from Tucson, Arizona. She got her degree in Journalism and Creative Writing at Falmouth University in Cornwall, England.