The Lie: Movie Review

Director: Helena Coan

Making great fist of CCTV footage throughout, director Helena Coan builds a strong picture of 21-year-old UK backpacker Grace Millane's final days before her brutal murder in 2018 in Auckland.

With much of the footage having been seen for those who followed the trial, and with the constant swirl of news being reported at the time, there is perhaps a feeling the Grace Millane case is still too recent a memory to provide the backbone of a documentary.

However, Coan smashes all of those perceptions away as she paints a truly chilling portrait of a murder and how a life was snatched away by a calculating killer.

Jesse Kempson was jailed for her death, despite claiming he had accidentally killed her during a "rough sex" session. 

Beginning with a drone shot above a road through the hills of the Waitakeres and finishing with a YouTube video from Millane herself, there's plenty of footage that will leave any rational people with their blood boiling. Wisely, Coan steers away from editorialising or sensationalising the case, preferring instead to comb through hours of CCTV footage to show how a killer operates.

It's frightening stuff in parts - whether it's footage from inside a hotel lift or at a DIY store, Coan manages to turn the seemingly mundane movements of Kempson into something chilling.

While Coan has plenty of material and media coverage to call on from before the trial and after, it's in the silences that Coan really shows her stripes as a director.

Deploying silence when needed, or simply letting the sound from the CCTV footage or from inside a police interview, Coan's innate skill lies in letting the pictures tell the story. It's an important distinction for a documentary like this - even if there is a nagging feeling that it would work better as a small screen piece.

While the consent/ rough sex debate is only raised six minutes from the end of the piece, and could warrant a wider discussion in a public forum, The Lie is not a film about that.

At its heart, The Lie is a clarion call and warning over how brutally a life can be ended, but with moments such as Detective Inspector Scott Beard's emotion in parts, as well as the harrowing effect it had on the Millane family, it is a film that has control and precision in its narrative - and more importantly than all of that, sensitive respect for its victim and memory.