White Lie Movie Review - Disinformation

White Lie creates a distressing situation of watching a woman who has gone far enough into accepting her pretence.

If there is a list of the best liars in a movie, Katie Arneson should be immediately put on it. Played by an excellent Kacey Rohl (Arrow, Hannibal), Katie is such a perfectionist that she may pass you a poisoned drink like a regular refreshment and deny any allegations without a blink. It won't be surprising if even the lie detector fails to catch her lie. Katie can confidently look deep into your eyes and declare, say a tomato to be an apple. The sheer conviction may tempt you to believe in her. No wonder the crowd buys into her story of having cancer while the fundraiser manages to collect about $24,000. It is not only the Internet getting fooled but also the campus (her posters decorate the corridors) and her girlfriend, Jennifer Ellis (Amber Anderson from Emma.). Jennifer is the one close person in Katie's life who loves her dearly. But this love is built on false hopes. Surrounded by fire, it will burn those near to it.

Katie scams in the name of cancer for personal and financial benefits. It inches her closer to a university bursary. Unfortunately, obtaining a bursary is no easy process as Katie is asked to reproduce medical documents confirming the disease. Taking the help of a shady acquaintance Owen (Connor Jessup), she meets with Dr. Jabari Jordan (Thomas Olajide) for producing fake records. Jordan agrees but demands an amount of $2000. Apparently, deception is an exorbitant business costing both money and credibility. Katie learns this lesson the hard way, or does she?

Writers and Directors Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas do not resolve conflicts. Instead, they strap us along with a character who is oblivious to the impact of her wrongdoings. A conversation with her father, Doug Arneson (Martin Donovan), reveals that Katie had done something similar in high school. What happened in high school? She faked sickness after her mother's death to skip school. Since this explanation comes from Katie, with whom we have spent almost an hour now, I started suspecting this statement. Though if it is true, then she possibly sees her sham as harmless as making an excuse to skip school during a delicate situation. What started as a white lie has turned into a black lie. The title, White Lie, is one of the dark jokes in a film that has someone cursing the other, hoping their mother dies only to find out that she actually died.

Let us dial back to the conversation with Doug. He is one of the first people to figure out Katie's lie. Fathers know best. As they talk, Doug is placed on the left side of the screen while Katie is on the right. The moment he catches her facade, the camera smoothly shifts to another side, placing Doug on the right and Katie on the left. The basic rule here is to keep the dominant person on the right. As the great Roger Ebert once wrote, "But in general terms, in a two-shot, the person on the right will 'seem' dominant over the person on the left."

White Lie gets uncomfortable to watch as it progresses. The most difficult part, however, is the exchanges betwixt Katie and Jennifer. Carry a heart made of steel while witnessing Katie unabashedly presenting fiction as facts to Jennifer. I squirmed when Katie dished out lies upon lies to cover up a story involving a flight ticket without flinching for a second. This is not her first time and definitely not the last. A part of me was repulsed and wanted to look away in another direction. The whole experience felt like being trapped in a horror movie, a point that further gets underlined by the jittery music. It's seriously chilling to watch someone so convinced of her fabrications that she starts believing every word emerging from her mouth to be true. Also, when was the last time when a lesbian or a Canadian - two words commonly associated with friendliness and decency - gave us a nightmare?

Note: Rock Salt Releasing will release ‘White Lie’ on various digital streaming platforms on 1/5/2021 (DirecTV, Amazon, InDemand, iTunes, FlixFling, AT&T, Vimeo on Demand, Vudu, Fandango & Google Play).

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