A reclusive man discusses his conspiracy theory regarding his daughter's unsolved murder with an interviewer.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Matthew Hope
Starring: Joseph Millson, Natalie Spence
Few things are more rewarding in a movie than a well executed twist. It can make you instantly want to rewatch the film to see how the filmmakers laid it all out while obfuscating their plan at the same time. Similarly, there are few things more frustrating than a badly executed twist, especially the sort that immediately collapses as soon as you rerun the movie in your mind.
Director Matthew Hope's Empire of Lies climaxes with such an unearned twist, one that not only doesn't hold up to any sort of scrutiny but which simply doesn't make any logical sense. It's a shame, as it lands just at the point when the movie has sucked us in to its drama.
Joseph Millson, who co-writes with Hope, plays Dave, a middle-aged man who lives in a camper van parked in a remote field. His life was destroyed a few years back when his daughter was murdered and the police positioned him as the prime suspect, though they couldn't find enough evidence to charge him.
One day Dave receives an unexpected and unwanted visitor in the form of a young woman (Natalie Spence) who claims to be a reporter for a political YouTube channel. She wants to interview Dave and promises her reporting will be without bias. After several increasingly angry attempts to get her to leave, Dave eventually gives in and reluctantly humours the interviewer's request.
Essentially a filmed two-hander play, Empire of Lies is a verbal game of cat and mouse in which Dave slowly lets his guard down and opens up to the interviewer, who seems to know just how to push his buttons. A self-confessed "far right conspiracy theorist," Dave is a stereotype of a certain type of person who has spent too much time in the worst corners of the internet. Ironically, Dave claims to have rejected all forms of technology (he believes 5G is poisonous, because of course he does), which makes you wonder where he was exposed to such theories.
Millson is scarily convincing in the role of a man so convinced by his own madness that he has an answer lined up to refute every logical question he's asked. Watching the increasingly exasperated interviewer struggle to make him see sense is akin to observing someone attempt to deprogramme a cult member. I have personal experience of friends and family members who got sucked into conspiracy rabbit holes, and Millson nails the dead-eyed look that gradually overtook them to the point where I was forced to cut them off (they became addicted to outrage, steering every conversation around to one of their crackpot theories, making it impossible to have a conversation on any topic).
Spence's suspiciously anxious performance keeps us guessing as to her character's real motives. Could she be a cop in disguise, as Dave begins to suspect? Or perhaps a member of the shadowy organisation Dave believes murdered his daughter? Dave's own defence shows cracks at several points, with flaws in his story that he doesn't seem able to account for. Is the interviewer in danger around the volatile Dave, or is Dave the one who should be worried?
The tension generated by this paranoid atmosphere and the performances of Millson and Spence are enough to make us invested in Empire of Lies' minimalist drama. Hope's film works best when he allows his actors to do their thing without fuss, but he occasionally injects Brechtian techniques that momentarily take us out of the drama, like how Spence delivers monologues straight to camera or how the eyelines don't always match. These techniques ultimately play into the twist, but there are other moments that make no sense in terms of the reveal standing up to scrutiny. That twist will likely provoke groans, but for at least 70 of its brief 77 minutes run time, Empire of Lies is an engaging drama that works best as a showcase for its two leads.
Empire of Lies is in UK cinemas from March 27th.
