THE LIE: THE MURDER OF GRACE MILLANE

The Lie: The Murder of Grace Millane, Brainstorm Media

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 28, 2024

If The Lie: The Murder of Grace Millane were about more than the brutal murder of a young woman and the chilling methods of her killer in attempting to cover up his crime, the entire structure and focus of this documentary would have to be completely different. Instead, director Helena Coan treats every detail of the crime as a mystery to be solved, as the movie lingers on each disturbing detail of the murder, the meticulous but transparent disposal of the victim's remains, and the cold-blooded attitude of a murderer who treated this horrific act as a series of everyday errands to complete.

What this documentary doesn't seem to care about, though, is Grace Millane, her family, her friends, or anyone else who may have been directly or even indirectly affected by her death. To be fair, it does care about these people in the broadest of terms, finding basic sympathy for the grief, a defense against those who would somehow blame Millane in some way for her own murder, and a general outcry against violence perpetrated against women. It feels like the bare minimum, however, and, as such, additional evidence that the sensational nature of the crime is first and foremost on the movie's mind.

The attempt to turn this into a puzzle to be solved here starts from the very beginning, as some security camera footage of Millane at a club in Auckland, New Zealand, where she was spending some time while on a worldwide vacation following her college graduation, quickly cuts, revealing her absence from the club. Initially, Millane's case was treated as a simple missing-person report, with many people assuming the traveler would turn up and contact family members or a friend after some innocent expedition off the grid.

Quickly, though, the police begin to suspect foul play. A person of interest fast becomes a suspect, and by way of dueling police interrogations, the movie shows us how that man, named Jesse Kempson, had lied at first about how much time he had spent with Millane and where they went. Once we realize how much the police knew at the time and how much the filmmakers know now, the entire portrayal and presentation of this investigation as mystery feels a bit dishonest.

The second half or so of the documentary follows Kempson, via a series of security camera and CCTV footage, up to him murdering Millane and in the aftermath of the killing. It's a mountain of evidence on its own, but the movie treats it as a continuing act of revelation.

What does it really reveal, though? It tells us nothing about Millane, except that she was alive at one moment, only for her dead body to be left in a hotel room and then removed from it in a gruesome way.

It says everything about Kempson, though, as he goes to various stores, rents a car, and even goes on a date with someone he met—as he did with Millane—on an app. There's a particularly stomach-churning moment when, after getting Millane's body out of the hotel without anyone knowing, he does a little, celebratory dance for the clerk on duty at the front desk. In its own way, the footage depicts a person who is, for lack of a better and more complete analysis, evil.

What is the movie really saying, though? It's a flat, fact-based account of a murder, presented as a string of shocking details and portrayed as something of a real-life horror story. It gives us the basics of who Millane was—a recent college grad who loved her family and was kind to everyone. That's all up front and pretty much the end of any attempt to see her as more than a young woman who didn't know the kind of man she agreed to meet one night and a victim.

It's difficult to determine if the filmmakers attempted to contact her family or friends or anyone who knew Millane. Their voices and faces appear in some public statements and archival interviews, but that's it. Indeed, the only person who appears as an interview subject for the documentary is the police detective who led the investigation. That's as telling as anything else here. The detective comes across as genuine (His statements during the investigation have him visibly holding back tears when he speaks of certain events, such as contacting Millane's parents), but the point is that the choice of this key subject displays that the filmmakers are only interested in certain details, the overwhelming majority of them having to do with the crime.

Some of the sentiments here, especially when the movie addresses some larger issues, make it difficult to plainly assert that The Lie: The Murder of Grace Millane is exploiting this woman's murder for the pure shock and horror of what happened. Its numerous omissions, fast-paced storytelling, and murder-mystery structure, though, definitely don't assuage us of the suspicion that it could be doing that.

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