Film Review: 'Dangerous Lies'

Life has proven tough for caregiver Katie Franklin (Camila Mendes) as of late, with her and her husband Adam's (Jessie T. Usher) financial problems putting their relationship on the rocks. But luck seems to change for the young couple when Katie's patient Leonard Wellsley (Elliott Gould) suddenly passes away. Not only does the couple discover a trunk filled with thousands of dollars in Leonard's attic, but Katie is also surprised to learn that Leonard left behind a will which bequeaths his house to her.

But even though things should be looking up for Katie and Adam, Katie can't shake the feeling that something isn't right. As she and Adam try to enjoy their lives following their miraculous windfall, the suspicions of the investigating Detective Chesler (Sasha Alexander) as well as several other strange events have Katie questioning everything--and fearing for her safety. Will Katie's good fortune come at the cost of her life?

It's crazy how much in common Dangerous Lies has with last year's Secret Obsession: both are Lifetime-esque thrillers, written and directed by people who have worked on Lifetime movies in the past, and even starring a few actors who have graced the screens of Lifetime before. In spite of their Lifetime leanings, though, both movies ended up making their premieres on Netflix, likely motivated (at least in part) to the star power behind both films.

While Secret Obsession had Brenda Song, Dangerous Lies has Riverdale star Camila Mendes, ironically playing another young woman caught up in a world of secrets and mystery--though definitely not to the same degree as seen in the show that put Mendes on the map. And additionally, while Secret Obsession ended up a flop thanks to a stale script that doesn't do nearly enough with its well-worn premise, Dangerous Lies initially appears to be fashioning itself into a slow-burning but intriguing mystery drama. But after two acts of solid build-up, the film's conclusion unfortunately leaves Dangerous Lies to fizzle out.

Starting out, Dangerous Lies seemed to have quite a bit going for it when compared to Secret Obsession. With an intrigue-building cold open and a deliberate pace, the film seemed to be crafting itself into a compelling murder mystery that keeps you questioning everything and everyone. The biggest problem the film faced in its first acts was that slow pace, which at times dragged the action to a crawl and began to feel like padding rather than tension. Dangerous Lies also suffers from sloppy character writing, which results in the film's main characters having such muddled motivations that they becomes hard to understand or care about them.

This also diminishes the film's apparent attempts at crafting Dangerous Lies into a morality tale about the perils of greed. Camila Mendes gives a strong lead performance, but finds herself playing a character whose motivations are left frustratingly unclear. While introduced as a compassionate person trying to stay optimistic and work hard to make a better lilfe for herself, her personality seems to flip flop once Leonard dies and she and Adam find the stashed money. One moment, she's all on board with Adam's plan to keep the money to keep themselves afloat, and another, she's apprehensive. It becomes a different kind of frustrating when Katie finds herself and Adam plagued by strange events and uncovering more secrets in their new home. As the more reluctant of the couple, it becomes impossible to understand why Katie continues to go along with Adam's increasingly unstable plan. With these unexplained shifts in her moral compass, you never get a clear insight into Katie's mind, which costs Dangerous Lies a compelling character arc that Mendes could've worked wonders with.

Adam's character turns out to be the more consistently written of the two, with Jessie T. Usher giving a performance that makes use of the morality tale Adam's character arc tells. Throughout the film, we get a palpable sense of tension bubbling just beneath the surface of Katie and Adam's relationship, with Usher bringing menace to Adam's darker moments that have you questioning his sanity and the validity of his professed love for Katie. SPOILER ALERT This becomes especially true as the film goes on and Adam proves willing to dispose of a dead body in order to keep their ill-gotten gains, and in the climax, even appears willing to risk Katie's life to keep his newfound fortune. Even as it becomes clear that Adam is a red herring, Usher's tense performance still manages to make you wonder if he's really as loving and trustworthy as Katie would like to believe. Adam's compelling character progression, however, is hampered by its lack of a conclusion. In the end, the film seems to simply chalk Adam up as an innocent victim of someone else's greed rather than address the amoral actions Adam's own greed led him to take, which at best leaves his character feeling underdeveloped like Katie's and at worst can be seen as the film trying to say Adam and Katie's actions were justified. Spoilers Over

So as mentioned before, these underbaked aspects of Dangerous Lies' main characters make it hard to get invested in the drama they become embroiled in, and some may even lose sympathy for Katie and Adam entirely. Mendes and Usher bring a lot of their performances, with the latter doing her best to make up for her character's sympathy-killing qualities, but the damage done by the script proves a tough obstacle for her performance to overcome.

In the end, though, what caused Dangerous Lies to truly fall apart for me was its final act, which serves to dismantle all the intrigue and suspense that was being built around Leonard's death and the secrets Katie and Adam discover upon moving into his house. After so many intriguing pieces to the puzzle Dangerous Lies seems to be creating, the resolution turns out to be far from elaborate and renders many plot points that the movie used to create its sense of mystery redundant. As such, the climax not only fails to pack nearly enough punch to justify the slow buildup to it, but it also leaves numerous plot threads dangling that never get resolved. SPOILER ALERT The most egregious of these unresolved threads are the cold open robbery that Katie and Adam are involved in and the money that serves as the catalyst for much of the film's conflict; neither turn out to be linked in any way to the film's main antagonists, with the former's inclusion in the film feeling completely arbitrary in hindsight. Spoilers Over

Going back to positives, the film's supporting cast is just as solid as its main players. Sasha Alexander makes for a likably gruff and no-nonsense detective (possibly drawing on her past experience playing one of the titular detectives of Rizzoli & Isles) and Cam Gigandet is effectively chilling as suspicious realtor Mickey Hayden. Elliott Gould is warm as the ill-fated Leonard Wellsley, and Jamie Chung is a surprising highlight as Julia Byron-Kim, bringing some unexpected emotional depth to her role as the film progresses.

On the whole, however, Dangerous Lies hits so many rough spots when it comes to its story that what could've been an engaging mystery thriller is left feeling hollow and uninspired. Add to that character writing that feels half-baked and leaves the film's capable leads struggling to piece their character's motivations together, and you have a film that works to show what happens when a film with a strong premise fails in the execution. Dangerous Lies starts out on a high note, but along the way, stumbles and never quite recovers from the fall.

Score: 4 out of 10 employment anniversaries.