“I know a better way to end this.”

I’m trying to instill a bit more *surprise* in my life this year in big and small ways like, for instance, not reading plot synopses before watching movies. Such Restraint delivered a small treat as I opened the door on White Lie and got that fresh, unadulterated jolt of shock realizing that Katie (Kacey Rohl), the film’s central figure, is faking cancer. This film wastes no time thrusting you into the emotional melee, plastering the film’s telling title over a 5-minutes-in shot of our darting-eyed protagonist in front of a room-spanning FIGHT FOR KATIE banner. The movie is set in a sadly all-too-familiar GoFundMe-powered era of healthcare, and the sympathy/empathy/people power required for us to keep each other from keeling over in the real world is played like a deranged harp in this skin-crawling tour-de-force of manipulation.

Right from the top, we see and feel deep in our squirming bones that Katie is squarely not in control of her situation. The paranoia kicks in sticky and fast, hardly letting up for a moment over the film’s 92-minute runtime. In classic web-of-lies fashion, when it does let up, you can sense you’re only being primed for something much worse just past the next few frames. The film is full of hushed and hurried phone calls to shadowy figures, watching eyes sizing Katie up as she pieces together her next and next and next precarious fabrication, and cliff’s edge emotional acceptance from the handful of lovers and confidantes she wheedles into serving as unwitting scaffolds for her con.

It’s appropriate that a movie initially scheduled for an April 2020 theatrical release, delayed of course by the pandemic, employs some of the glossy performances and techniques of a Bourne or any other A-lister-powered paranoid thriller to tell a story where the stakes are deliberately scaled down. Several details neatly accomplish this. Early on, Katie seeks falsified medical records from her go-to underworld connect Owen (Connor Jessup); he’s initially dumbfounded at the request. These shady docs are something that could turn up by the briefcase-full alongside wads of cash in a lockbox for some other thriller’s denizen, but here we see the real sweaty-forehead strain and danger of such a request. At other critical moments, the need for $1,000 or $2,000 is a deadly hurdle.

Money also sets up one of the many painful dynamics between Katie and her infinitely supportive girlfriend Jennifer (Amber Anderson). Jennifer has helped Katie set up multiple online fundraisers, designed the posters and other visuals for her dance fundraiser, brought her wealthy parents on board to float much of the “medical” costs, and provided priceless emotional support throughout. We’re treated to some sticky class commentary through this relationship: when Katie needs $2,000 for “plane tickets,” Jennifer simply cruises her Mercedes SUV to the bank to pull it. Not without questioning exchanges and a rolling avalanche of excuses from Katie, but the money is there. This gigantic leap from insurmountable to insignificant amounts of cash between two people sharing a bed is another of the squirmy, too-real elements at the twitchy heart of this movie.

No spoilers, but this movie’s most devastating moments come when Katie’s plan runs afoul of the big bad world of laws and adults. This is another hit of movie magic: we’ve been drawn completely into the plight of this somewhat sympathetic and mostly believable college student, completely wrapped up in the reality of what she’s doing in that limited third person narrative way which cauterizes our understanding of a reality beyond what we’re seeing. But unlike many other movies which would keep their protagonist’s world watertight for the sake of mood and pacing, this one punctures it hard, shattering both our and Katie’s expectations about the level of game she is attempting to play.

All the while, as we watch Katie fill real RX bottles with fake pills or frantically stuff cash in envelopes or read a dinosaur book to Jennifer’s nephew or have devastating confrontations with her father, we’re flooded by this very specific movie feeling that you either cherish or dread depending on what type of movie-goer you are. There is an undeniable sense that this wildly vibrating house of cards is going to come crashing down before movie’s end. The moment you step into this world, you’ve surrendered to gravity, accelerating towards terminal velocity and the waiting earth’s implacable embrace.

As Katie enters the final stages of her unraveling subterfuge, she gets a text from her guy Owen: “Don’t know what you’re thinking, but if you’re gonna keep going I know someone who can help.” It’s a sharp reminder that when the fields are salted with paranoia and desperation, there’s always a little further down you can go.

WHITE LIE: A Coup de Grâce for Childish Things