Movie Review - Dangerous Lies

Director Michael M. Scott has an extensive filmography. He has over 50 credits, going back to the 90's. He's churned out two to three movies a year for over 30 years. Most of those movies have been either on Lifetime or the Hallmark channel on cable television. If you've seen any film, produced by Lifetime or Hallmark, then this film will feel very much in that vein and aesthetic. Lifetime and Hallmark are mostly geared toward women and often have women in the lead roles. Often, their films are low budget and quickly made, almost as if off a manufacturing line, nothing too edgy or anything really controversial. They're more family-friendly and wholesome. There have been films like Mother, May I Sleep with Danger (1996), which became a scary cult classic in the stalker genre. Yet, this film, which involves a murder, never feels all that dangerous or deadly. It's perhaps mildly creepy in some moments, but I never really felt the titular feeling, even as the untruths started to rack up.

Camila Mendes (The Perfect Date and Riverdale) stars as Katie Franklin, a waitress at a diner who aspires to have a career in medicine, possibly pediatrics. Right now, she has a job as a caretaker and assistant for an elderly man. She's married with no children. She and her husband struggle though to pay the bills and have a nice life in south Chicago. Things change when the elderly man who employs Katie suddenly dies and it's revealed that the elderly man has left his entire estate, which is mostly just his large house, to Katie. She's also surprised that the elderly man was also sitting next to a hidden fortune that no one knew. If this premise sounds familiar, it's similar to the recent hit and Oscar-nominated film Knives Out (2019), minus the great ensemble or a crazy central performance by someone like Daniel Craig.

Jessie T. Usher (Shaft and Independence Day: Resurgence) co-stars as Adam Kettner, the husband to Katie. He's studying business and hoping to graduate, but trying to go to school and paying for it are proving rough for him and his wife. Before Katie's boss dies, he takes a job as a gardener and landscaper with Katie's boss, which is something that isn't supposed to happen. People who are related aren't supposed to work at the home where one related person is acting as caretaker. It's more of a wrong here than that what was happening in Parasite (2019). Yet, this film isn't crafted nearly as cleverly as that Oscar-winning phenomenon.

Sasha Alexander (Rizzoli & Isles and NCIS) plays Detective Chesler. She's the no-nonsense, veteran cop who realizes that something strange is occurring. She becomes suspicious of Katie and Adam. She becomes especially so when a dead body shows up that appears to have been murdered and that body is connected to the house of the elderly man where Katie and Adam now live.

Her investigation adds a little bit of pressure, but the real tension is between Katie and Adam. Keeping the inherited house and money becomes the objects of contention. Katie is fine with giving the so-called inheritance back and Adam wants to keep it. It's not just a matter of greed, but a matter of desperation. The screenplay by David Golden whose résumé consists mostly of Christmas movies and rom-coms doesn't do the work though of developing Adam's desperation. The film purposely makes Adam a bit of a mystery so that he can be a suspect in the murder, which is casually thrown into the narrative.

Cam Gigandet and Jamie Chung are two actors who are thrown into the mix as well, but the film doesn't develop them much at all, as to make them factors about which to care.

Rated TV-14.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 37 mins.

Available on Netflix.