The Movie: The Lie
The Director: Veena Sud
The Cast: Mireille Enos, Peter Sarsgaard, Joey King, Cas Anvar, Devery Jacobs, Brittany
Nicholas Lea, Patti Kim
The Story: A father and daughter are on their way to dance camp when they spot the girl's best friend on the side of the road. When they stop to offer the friend a ride, their good intentions soon result in terrible consequences.
The Review:
The Lie is a part of Welcome to the Blumhouse, an anthology of unique and unsettling thrillers showcasing diverse casts led by emerging filmmakers, including several female directors. Produced by Blumhouse and available exclusively on Amazon Prime Video worldwide, the first four films in the series will be released in October 2020, with four more titles set to arrive in 2021.
Joey King is one of those child stars that you can't help but enjoy watching as she seems to grow older with every movie she makes and her skills as an actor just get better and better. Her work in this movie is as solid as anything else she has done and she actually shows more of a range than I've seen from her which owes a lot to the material she has to work with. Also along for the ride are Mireille Enos and Peter Sarsgaard who play King's parents and they are equally up to the task while taking on some pretty emotional character work.
While I was impressed with the individual characters and the performances from the actors who play them, I was less so with the story itself which is kind of bland and very predictable. I mean, fifteen minutes in, you pretty much know what's going to happen and then it's just a matter of hoping that the movie is entertaining enough to keep you engaged until you get to the big plot twists at the end.
This movie originally debuted in 2018 at the Toronto International Film Festival and I was curious to see why it took this long and a name change for it to see an eventual release. I will give director Veena Sud a lot of credit for almost creating an excellent mystery thriller and hopefully she can build on this as she progresses in her career.
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