PLOT SUMMARY: After pushing her friend Britney off a bridge, Kayla seems unaffected much to the surprise of her parents.
You must have heard of the saying 'It runs in the family.'
Anything a child does, especially, is blamed on the parents.
The child is well-behaved? Oh, so are the parents.
The child is insolent and a liar, well, the parents aren’t saints either. It must run in the family. Like father, like son. Like mother, like daughter.
Truth be told, a child’s upbringing is solely the parent’s responsibility, so if the kid isn’t behaving, the parents will always be blamed.
It must be a difficult job being a parent, especially to a teenager because that is when they start keeping secrets. No matter how hard a parent tries, the teenager is now exposed to the world and they are trying to figure their way around. They are going to meet people they want to impress, learn from, avoid or attract. At this point, they aren’t always going to figure out what is right or wrong for them. Their decision is likely to be based on external factors such as the opinions of their peers.
THE LIE/ BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY Movie Plot
Kayla was a sweet little girl who grows up to be a moody teenager. Her parents have divorced and are already seeing other people. Her parents know she dislikes the situation because she keeps frowning at everything and makes her disapproval obvious.
Her parents Jay and Rebecca feel guilty about destroying Kayla’s happiness which is why she’s allowed to be as moody as she wants to.
Her mother sets up a ballet retreat for her and Jay is tasked with driving his daughter there.
Kayla tries to get out of it but her parents are insistent. On the way, she sees her friend at a stop and calls her in. Britney loses no time being flirtatious with Jay, much to Kayla’s chagrin.
Soon Britney wants to answer nature’s call and asks Jay to stop the car immediately or risk soiling his car.
Jay stops in the middle of nowhere and the two girls run off into the snowy woods after reminding each other how weird and stalker-y and disgusting they are.
Jay gets tired of waiting and gets out of the car only to hear a girl’s scream. He heads to the bridge and finds Kayla sitting on the railing peering at the rapids below. She tells him she pushed Britney.
Jay frantically searches for Britney in the river but can’t find her anywhere. Kayla calls her father and explains they need to leave. On the way, a truck passes by and they both hide from it.
Jay then goes to meet Rebecca who is a lawyer. She automatically assumes Jay misplaced Kayla’s inhaler which is why she’s now sick. Jay reconsiders telling her the truth and when he sees Kayla sitting on the swing, scolds her for getting into the car. Kayla proceeds to throw up and Rebecca and Jay take her home.
While Kayla is taking a bath, she reveals to her mother what she did.
Shocked, Rebecca and Jay discuss how they need to proceed with protecting their daughter.
They are at their wit's end, thinking how could their daughter have turned so malicious as to hurt her best friend. Rebecca even dreams of Britney’s body lying near the river.
Kayla is Fine the next morning though and seems to have a good appetite. Her parents begin to wonder if she’s a psychopath. While Jay isn’t at home, Britney’s father Sam comes to visit. He thinks Kayla and his daughter made a joint plan to skip the retreat.
Rebecca tells him Kayla never went because she fell ill and has no idea where his daughter is. Sam wants to talk to Kayla but he isn’t allowed to do so.
When Jay comes to Rebecca’s house she tells him Sam is looking for his daughter. Jay wonders what is going on with him and recalls Britney having a bruise on her jaw. They wonder if her father was abusing her.
Sam returns and can’t find his daughter. He wants to talk to Kayla and again is told she isn’t at home but at the doctor's. Sam wonders what both the parents are doing here then when they should be with their daughter. Kayla chooses that moment to come out and stare blankly at Sam.
Sam freaks out. He realizes Kayla’s parents are hiding something and gets frightened for his daughter. Jay intervenes and is punched in the nose.
Rebecca takes him inside and gives him first aid and they laugh about something. Kayla is pleased to see her parents together laughing.
Rebecca and Jay make plans to go to the police in case Sam reports them. Rebecca uses her connection Detective Kenji and tells her how Britney’s father was abusive and hit his daughter and now she’s missing.
Detective Kenji, along with her partner go see Sam who says he did file a report but since Britney is a teenager and had run away before, no one took him seriously. The detectives are more concerned about his ethnicity and ask him why their daughter keeps running away.
Sam realizes Kayla’s parents are behind this visit from the police.
He finds Kayla walking down the road and asks her where his daughter is but she screams and runs away only to begin walking in the middle of the road so he can come with his car. If she was trying to hide, walking down the middle of the road was clearly not a good idea.
She makes it back to the house only to have Sam trying to peek in. She hides until her parents come back. Her parents are completely on edge and when Jay takes her back to his place, Kayla sees his girlfriend already there. Jay’s girlfriend reprimands him for showing up late for the rehearsal for their gig. She then shows him a purse she found in his car and asks whose it is.
It is Britney’s purse and apparently, she only had a phone inside. No ID or anything. As if she didn’t open and check to find if who the purse belonged to?
Jay maintains it is Kayla’s purse but his girlfriend is hardly convinced and is thrown out of the house.
Jay realizes the phone is still inside and could have been detected.
Meanwhile, Detective Kenji and her partner come for a visit and tell Rebecca that Britney’s phone last pinged downtown, after she was reported missing and that Jay, her ex-husband lived downtown as well. Rebecca manages to evade their accusations only to have Jay tell her he does have the phone. Kayla tells them Sam used to hit Britney, a lie the parents aren’t too pleased she told.
The detectives start searching for clues and head off to the bridge.
Kayla is busy making eggs with Gouda every day and creating a mess in the kitchen and watching cartoons. She seems fine while her parents are on the verge of a breakdown.
The movie’s name is The Lie. It’s becoming fairly obvious what the lie is.
The detective returns and asks Jay if he had been at the bridge. He maintains he never made it there as Kayla fell sick before he could get there and had to be taken to Rebecca. After reconfirming it, Detective Kenji removes an inhaler from her pocket that clearly belongs to Kayla as per the label on it.
Rebecca throws the cops out but the parents are now desperate to take extreme measures to save their daughter.
THE LIE/ BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY Ending Explained with Spoilers!
At night, they head to Sam’s house and dig a hole to hide Britney’s purse and phone. They are bad at it and are caught immediately by Sam who demands to know what they’ve done to his daughter. He grabs Rebecca’s arm which causes Jay to lose his cool and beat up Sam. He tries drowning him in icy cold water but Rebecca pulls him back.
Rebecca has her own ideas on how to deal with Sam who is relentless. As they are driving away, Sam comes to stand in the middle of the road. Rebecca has had enough and even as Jay advises her not to, she runs him over.
Sam dies as Jay keeps asking Rebecca to call for help. The murderers return home to wash the blood from their car.
Britney happily walks in and asks them where Kayla is.
Now Kayla has gone to school just minutes ago. Were the parents sitting at the table looking at the mess Kayla made while making breakfast? It doesn’t explain how Britney just saunters in when she’s supposed to be in school herself.
Anyway, Britney takes one look at the bloody rag and grows nervous. Rebecca tells Britney to go home. Thankfully Britney is spared as Rebecca looks on the verge of another kill. She learns the truth and along with Jay go and stand in front of Kayla who somehow guessed Britney told her parents the truth. How?
Did Britney text her? Wasn’t she too scared after seeing her best friend’s parents with bloody rags? Her first instinct was not to check on her father but text Kayla?
And did Kayla hear her parents in the garage? The last scene was unfortunately very loosely integrated into the film.
Kayla weeps about how she went along with the lie because Britney thought it was funny if everyone thought she was pushed off a bridge when actually she had gone to see her boyfriend. And Kayla went along with it because her lie brought her parents together. She cries and her parents melt and hug her.
There’s no screaming about how dare she lie to them. Or a slap or any form of scolding. Nope, Kayla lied, caused her parents to have sleepless nights, turned them into murderers, but hey, she cried so all is forgiven.
Kayla pleads with them not to leave but oops, the cops have already come.
Now Kayla can live without her parents, probably go to a foster home because she thought it was hilarious lying to her parents about pushing a girl off a bridge and causing her death.
Don’t lie, kids.
Scare scale: 2/5
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