Dangerous Lies

I remember exactly where I was when Dangerous Lies dropped on Netflix in April 2020. Like the rest of the world, I was three weeks into a global lockdown, had already finished Tiger King, and was beginning to eye my sourdough starter with genuine resentment. We were a captive audience in the most literal sense, and Netflix knew it. They delivered this thriller right when our standards for "entertainment" had dipped to an all-time low, which is perhaps the only reason it managed to sit at the #1 spot on the platform for a week before vanishing into the digital ether. Watching it again recently, without the haze of pandemic-induced boredom, I found it to be a fascinating artifact of the "Streaming Algorithm" era—a film that exists because a computer likely calculated that we really wanted to see Camila Mendes in something that wasn’t Riverdale.

The Pandemic Algorithm Special

The plot is a grab-bag of every thriller trope from the last thirty years, stitched together with the kind of logic that only makes sense if you aren't paying full attention. Camila Mendes plays Katie, a struggling waitress-turned-caretaker who is working for a lovely, wealthy elderly man named Leonard (Elliott Gould, who I can only assume was lured to the set with the promise of a very comfortable chair and a short workday). When Leonard suddenly passes away and leaves his entire multi-million dollar estate to Katie, things get weird. Suddenly, there are bags of cash in the attic, a pushy estate lawyer played by Jamie Chung (giving us a performance from The Gifted), and a creepy real estate agent played by Cam Gigandet, who seems to have walked off the set of Twilight and forgotten to stop being menacing.

I watched this during a particularly loud thunderstorm, and the plot has more holes than a head of Swiss cheese, which made for a strange viewing experience. At one point, Katie and her husband Adam (played by Jessie T. Usher, the standout from The Boys) find a literal dead body and a bag of diamonds, and their first instinct isn’t to call the police, but to just... keep the diamonds and hang out in the house? It’s the kind of decision-making that makes you want to reach through the screen and give the characters a gentle shake.

A Lifetime Aesthetic with a Netflix Budget

Visually, the film is competent but remarkably bland. Director Michael M. Scott has a background steeped in TV movies, and it shows. There’s a certain "cleanliness" to the cinematography that feels sterile. Everything is too well-lit, the Chicago estate is a little too staged, and the tension never quite curdles into real suspense. To me, it’s essentially a Lifetime movie that accidentally got a gym membership and a bigger lighting kit. It lacks the grit of a 90s erotic thriller or the stylistic flair of a modern A24 production.

The film serves as a perfect example of the "Current Era" problem: it’s "content" more than it is "cinema." It was designed to be consumed while you’re scrolling through TikTok on your phone. It doesn't demand your full attention because it knows that if you look too closely, the seams start to rip. For instance, Sasha Alexander (from Rizzoli & Isles) shows up as a detective, and she’s given so little to do that you wonder if her scenes were filmed during a lunch break on a different project. There’s no sense of space or community; the world feels like it consists of four people and one very large, suspiciously quiet house.

Performances That Deserved a Better Blueprint

If there’s a reason to stick with Dangerous Lies, it’s the chemistry—or lack thereof—between Camila Mendes and Jessie T. Usher. They are both incredibly charismatic actors who are doing their absolute best to sell a script that feels like it was written by an AI programmed on a diet of John Grisham novels. Camila Mendes proves she can carry a movie; she has a grounded quality that almost makes you believe her character’s questionable choices. Jessie T. Usher plays the "is he a good guy or a bad guy?" role with enough ambiguity to keep you guessing, even when the script starts telegraphing its twists like a lighthouse in a fog.

It turns out the film was shot in just 15 days in Vancouver, which explains why so much of it feels rushed. There’s a scene involving a basement confrontation that felt so claustrophobic I wondered if they’d run out of budget for a second camera angle. Despite these limitations, there is a weird, comforting watchability to it. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a box of supermarket donuts—you know they aren't "good," and they certainly aren't "artisanal," but you’re still going to eat three of them because they’re right there in front of you.

Ultimately, Dangerous Lies is a film that reflects the rapid-fire nature of our current streaming landscape. It’s a middle-of-the-road thriller that arrived at a time when we were desperate for a distraction, and in that specific context, it succeeded. It won’t be remembered as a classic, and it certainly won't be studied in film schools, but it serves as a reminder of that weird moment in 2020 when we all agreed to watch whatever the "Top 10" list told us to. It’s a harmless, forgettable diversion that offers a few cheap thrills and a reminder that if a rich old man leaves you his house, you should probably check the attic for bodies before you start spending the inheritance.