John Carlin’s Lie of the Land is a taut home-invasion thriller that didn’t quite hit the mark. Looking to escape their debt, an elderly couple enlist the aid of a young man who promises to take them “off the grid”. When it becomes clear he is only interested in taking what little money they have, their last resort becomes their last stand as it quickly turns to a fight for survival in this independent flick from Northern Ireland.
The film starts off quite strong, slowly and methodically depicting the morning of Cath and Ward as they prepare their farm for eventual desertion. We see Ward selling off the last of their cattle, much to Cath’s dismay, and we see Cath cleaning the house, saying goodbye to their possessions and reflecting on her time in the house she grew up in.
Debt — be it emotional or financial — is a pervading shadow that hangs over the whole film. Cath and Ward, just barely scraping by, have never been able to escape their homestead. Their monetary burdens have prevented them from truly celebrating their marriage, and they talk of all the travel they wish they could have done previously. Cath is haunted by the memory of her overbearing mother, who she looked after in her deteriorating mental state as a result of Alzheimer’s. Unable to let go, Cath has kept the room in which her mother lay in pristine condition.
The film taps into everyday anxieties that face people amid our current cultural and political climate. Not only are they unable to afford to live in their family home of generations past, but they fall prey to a scam artist who is looking to extort them of their life savings. According to a FraudSMART survey from the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) conducted in 2019, “one in five (22%) older people are targeted at least weekly by attempts to defraud them”. Despite the perception that this mainly affects the elderly, more recent statistics show that young people between the ages of 20-49 have been the main victims of scams.
Shepherd, a well-dressed young man, promises Cath and Ward an escape from the debt collectors and the burdens of their past. His invasion into their house mirrors Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, as he quickly cuts them off from any connection to the outside world. Funnily enough, despite Shepherd promising to get them “off the grid”, the protagonists already exist a very frugal lifestyle with little technology in sight. Their one mobile phone is a flip phone from a pre-iPhone age. Their stereo takes CDs and they have no TV. This oddly contrasts with the very digital nature of scams in our modern era. There is no accidentally clicking on a Facebook ad and inputting digital card details. Everything is very textile, old school. A big bag of physical notes are at stake, and a corporeal man in black comes to charm the couple and seize what he believes is his. It is both charming and silly, leaving me unsure if the film is intentionally naive or purposely bringing back some older form of scam-artistry for some cinematic or dramatic effect. But who says digital scams can’t be cinematic or heightened in drama? Thelma, from the same year, certainly proves tension can arise from the elderly being duped online.
In any case, this leads to our two main characters being hunted through their own house by this violent Terminator-like threat, able to walk off any bruises and cuts. This, however, is where all tension in the film dissipates. What begins as an interesting, methodical meditation on this elderly couple and their farm, invaded by the suspenseful threat of this duplicitous man, becomes a rote thriller that repeats scenes ad nauseam. Cath and Ward hide in their respective cupboards or barn houses as the killer slowly makes his way through the property, checking every nook and cranny. When he does find them, a short scuffle ensues, they are in a position to fight back and yet they run away again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
This repetitive structure isn’t helped by the fact that it was clear the filmmakers couldn’t do any damage to the property, so the killer’s aversion to breaking any windows to get inside the house takes away any of the menace he once had. The small budget also doesn’t help, but even then there are parts where characters are in a position to attack or fight back and they refuse to take it any time. The killer is right in front of your car and you can run him over? Nah, we’ll drive at a leisurely pace and let him run away. You’ve knocked the gun out of his hand and stabbed him in the foot, time to use that gun and shoot him, right? No, we’ll just run away. Instead of working around these budget limitations, the film constantly finds excuses to delay the inevitable, and once the film hits the 35 minute mark it becomes one long extended climax where we are waiting for the film to end.
Concluding with the burning down of the property, the characters are eventually able to let go of their emotional baggage, although it never quite concludes how they are going to stay financially afloat. It is a shame, because with such a good premise and an emotional backstory that hooked me in, this could have been a really good thriller. But unfortunately, Lie of the Land landed on its face.
