“Dangerous Lies” is as Predictable as Can be

On a dark and dreary day that matched up with my mood, I watched Netflix’s new thriller — because a thriller always seems to pop up there every week, and most of the time they aren’t good — Dangerous Lies, and it certainly didn’t bring up my mood.

The film is about a woman named Katie (Camila Mendes) who’s a caretaker for this rich, elderly man named Leonard (Elliot Goud). One day, Leonard dies and leaves his estate to Katie. However, something’s amiss when an eccentric real estate agent appears at the house, and other strange events occur that heightens Katie’s paranoia.

Katie has a husband named Adam (Jessie Usher) who struggles to find work, but ends up working alongside Katie at Leonard’s estate. Adam also has a mysterious past which may link to a robbery that occurs at the beginning of the movie.

The film may be a thriller, but I wasn’t thrilled by it. If anything, I was bored and annoyed. Bored because nothing exciting happens, and annoyed because the characters are dumb — particularly Adam. Adam makes rash decisions that get Katie in trouble, but Katie isn’t exactly the brightest either; at one point in the film, the two find a body in a shed and they don’t call the police. They just sit around and talk while I’m sitting on my couch ready to rip out my hair.

Did I mention that this was boring? It’s so boring that I don’t have much to say about it. The first half reminds me a bit of Knives Out which was a much better film…actually, can I review that one instead? I know it’s been out for several months now but — okay fine, I’ll continue to review this.

If there’s one good thing here, it’s that the cast is fairly diverse. Our main characters are an interracial couple which is nice, but they don’t have the best relationship. Adam has to rely on Katie to make money, and he’s also rather sketchy. He fails to communicate with Katie like normal couples should do, and again, doesn’t call the police whenever something strange happens at the house — which is a lot of times.

It’s frustrating whenever the main characters don’t act realistically; it doesn’t make them likable or intriguing, it makes us question, “why do we care about these people if they’re so dumb?” The only interesting character we got is Leonard, but he dies in the first twenty minutes so that’s great.

Other actors include Sasha Alexander and Jamie Chung who play a detective and lawyer respectfully. They have big roles, and even though a majority of the roles are female, none of them are memorable.

Not only was this film boring, but it was also predictable. I practically predicted everything that was going to happen, and that’s a bad sign when there’s supposed to be a mystery going on. There’s no mystery, no suspense, no thrills it’s just such a slog to get through.

Overall, Dangerous Lies is a mundane movie with nothing new to offer. It’s not terrible, but it’s far, far from good. There’s much better thrillers out there, heck even the thriller that I reviewed last week, Earth and Blood, at least had something going on. Sure, it wasn’t the best but I would rather watch that one again than this film.

Originally published by Lauren Massuda on May 3, 2020