‘The Lie’ Is Not Based on a True Story, but It’s Connected to Another Fictional Work

Life often tells horrific stories, and some of them serve as inspiration for infamous psychological horror movies, from serial killers to allegedly true stories regarding hauntings and demons. ‘The Lie’ is a different type of psychological horror, the one that showcases what people are prepared to do when their children are in danger. So naturally, due to the nature of the movie and the sensitive topic that it deals with, plenty of people were wondering whether some real-life case of a story inspired it. This is what we’re going to clear up today. Let’s see if ‘The Lie’ was based on a true story.

‘The Lie’ asks us how far we are ready to go to protect our children

Debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, 2018, ‘The Lie’ is the first entry in the anthological ‘Welcome to the Blumhouse’ film series. It is a psychological horror written and directed by Veena Sud and features an incredible cast consisting of Mireille Enos, Peter Sarsgaard, and Joey King.

The movie has a rather simple premise, but the one that keeps you gripping your seat. Jay and Rebecca are a divorced couple with a teenage daughter, Kayla. Kayla is not the happiest kid for the last few years due to her parents being divorced. Still, they try to make it work and co-parent their daughter the best they can. One day, Jay is driving his daughter and her friend Brittney to the ballet retreat, and after Brittney goes to the toilet in the woods, Kayla follows. Soon, screams can be heard, and Jay finds his daughter alone on the bridge, looking into the pitch-black water of the river below.

Kayla says that she murdered Brittney, and when they come to her mother’s house, she repeats her confession once again. Brittney’s father, Sam, naturally becomes highly suspicious regarding the family, as Rebecca and Jay are trying their best sloppy selves to cover up the crime. But they made one major mistake: Britney’s phone had been in Jay’s car this whole time, and since the parents were trying their best to frame Sam for the crime, they did not shy away from planting evidence in his garden as they headed to bury the cellphone in his yard.

Sam catches them red-handed, and he says that he knows that Kayla killed Britney; he tries to stop them from leaving in their car, and Rebecca, on purpose, drives into him, severely hurting him. As Sam is bleeding on the road, the two debate whether to call the medics or not, they decide to leave him to die and one more crime is added to their list.

The next morning, as both parents are trying their best to clean the evidence of their murder and clean the car, Brittney shows up out of nowhere, and the two girls admit that it was all just a ruse so that Brittney can go visit her boyfriend. In a horrific moment of realization Jay and Rebecca realize that they’ve just killed a guy for absolutely nothing. Kayla breaks down and admits that she wants to tell them the truth but decides against it when she sees her parents getting along like a true family for the first time in ages. In the last scene of the movie, police sirens can be heard in the distance as they are coming to arrest Rebecca and Jay.

Kids am I right?

So, is ‘The Lie’ based on a true story?

Despite the premise of the movie easily sounding like it could be based on a true story, a misunderstanding of sorts since we do know that teens can be masters of deception and getting parents into all kinds of shenanigans, it’s fortunately not based on a true story. ‘The Lie’ is actually a remake of the German movie under the name ‘We Monsters’ (‘Wir Monster’), and it was penned by Marcus Seibert and Sebastian Ko.

Veena Sud penned the American version of the film, and despite changing a few things, ‘The Lie’ is pretty much faithful to the original. Sud also added its own unique twist to the movie and changed Brittney’s father’s race to that of Pakistani so she could add its own unique twist to it adding an element of racism to the whole narrative.

Even though this is the story of an American family, it’s also a microcosm of the bigger American experience of racial injustice Sud said.

And that’s pretty much the whole story behind the movie. Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!