The Lie

The Lie is a joyless exercise featuring Peter Sarsgaard and Mireille Enos as a pair of divorced parents who decide to to work together to hide the fact that their daughter (Joey King) is responsible for the death of one of her friends (Devery Jacobs) during a contrived set-up in the film's tiresome first act.

The film features the parents making a series of bad decisions, including trying to throw suspicion on the missing girl's father (Cas Anvar) as the reason for her disappearance by painting him as a child abuser while forcing their daughter to echo the lies to the police. Sarsgaard and Enos do what they can, but there's not much here to work with, while King is stuck with a character the script can never properly come to terms with. Melodramatic as a tween with her first phone, events spiral out of control and even an absurd late twist can't save what is best forgotten.

Even with a running time of only 97 minutes, the film is struggle to see through until the end. After sitting on the shelf for two years, the film was released on Amazon Prime as part of Blumhouse Productions' 8-film anthology Welcome to the Blumhouse.