A remake of Wir Monster (2015). This story of unfortunate family ties stars Peter Sarsgaard and Mireille Enos as divorced parents to Kayla, as played by Joey King, their somewhat entitled fifteen-year-old daughter.
When Kayla is being taken to her ballet retreat by her father, they pick up one of her friends along the way, who is also going. Whilst not previously arranged, the father agrees to take Kayla's friend Britney along too. Not the smartest of moves, as whilst on a pee-break, the two allegedly have an altercation and Kayla pushes Britney off a bridge into an icy river, never to be seen again.
Enter The Lie. Kayla tells her father the truth at the scene of the 'accident' and the two of them return home to spill the beans to Mom. And so the web of deception becomes just that little more complicated and the plot thickens further when Britney's father becomes suspicious and the family receives a visit from local law enforcement, where Kayla confirms her complete lack of knowledge of Britney's disappearance and embellishes her story further that Britney's father would regularly beat her. a plot hatched from seeing a bruise on Britney's face on the morning of her demise.
Then it becomes a 'will they/won't they get away with it?' scenario, really. The police start to sniff around, and you get the impression that this ruse won't be as plain sailing as everyone in the family hopes.
It's watchable enough, if you can overlook the fact that Joey King would have been twenty when this was filmed and not fifteen, the performances from her parents are not the best you have ever seen, but they're not awful either. There is a distinct lack of tension in what is inarguably a tragedy and this ambles on maybe longer than it needs to with Kayla's frankly witless parents doing what they think is right out of love for their daughter, rather than turning her in for some hard time at the clinky.
An all round moral puzzler of a plot which lacks real endearment, when this is the very least we should expect, given the circumstances. If it has anything especially unexpected about it, it is the twist that gets dropped on you at the end, even if you may come away from this feeling cheated.
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