Lies We Tell, Rewriting J. Sheridan Le Fanu

In gothic fiction, never count on family members to have your best interests at heart, especially the scandalous once or twice removed kind. This will be especially true of Maud Ruthyn’s Uncle Silas—as in that Uncle Silas. With “modern” audiences in mind, screenwriter Elisabeth Gooch revised and re-worked Le Fanu’s classic to “unproblematized” the annoyingly “virtuous” heroine, rather unnecessarily, considering the original novel clearly indicts the legal and social constraints placed on 19^th Century women. However, fans of the novel should be amused by the musical chairs putting familiar characters in somewhat different positions throughout Lisa Mulcahy’s Lies We Tell, which releases this Friday on VOD.

Poor Ruthyn’s father passed away, leaving her in the care of his brother Silas. Frankly, a pall still lingers of her Uncle, even though he has been cleared of the suspicious locked-room death of the man whom he owed considerable gambling debts. Her father’s trustees wish to challenge the codicil, but she unwisely trusts in family.

Initially, uncle and niece play nice, but there is immediate friction with his caddish son, Edward. Instead of siding with her, crusty old Silas encourages her to acquiesce to his son’s often inappropriate (or worse) advances, clearly with the intention of maintaining control over her fortune, even after she reaches her majority.

Uncle Silas never really manages to gaslight his niece, but he buys the loyalty of the servants and Dr. Byerly, one of her father’s two trustees. Consequently, Ruthyn finds herself cut off from the outside world, including Captain Ilbury, the second trustee. Thanks to the mercenary Byerly she also faces the very real threat of institutionalization, which was especially grim in the mid-1800’s.

Lies We Tell will appeal to viewers who know and love Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas in much the same way Dark Shadows fans were intrigued to see longtime cast-members fulfilling different roles in the early-70’s films. It adds a novelty element that greatly helps when the second act bogs down in the hopelessness mandated buy the film’s sexual politics.

The pace picks up again down the stretch, when Ruthyn reasserts herself. It is worth noting this section adheres most faithfully to Le Fanu’s source novel. Indeed, for long stretches, Gooch ‘s screenplay commits the very same sins it was intended to redeem.

Regardless, David Wilmot is terrific as Uncle Silas. He shifts from charming to menacing and then back to charming, with terrifying credibility. Agnes O’Casey is thoroughly de-glamorized to portray Maud Ruthyn with appropriate dour seriousness. Holly Sturton provides a nice counterpoint, capturing the dark edge beneath the flightiness of Silas’s daughter Emily. However, Chris Walley underwhelms as the predatory Edward.

Mulcahy and Gooch miss nearly as often as they hit with their re-conception of Le Fanu, but they certainly prove the gothic subgenre holds a good deal of untapped potential. The mixed results are sufficiently interesting to watch when the film hits free streaming platforms. However, most genre fans will agree the generically-titled Lies We Tell does not justify your hard-earned money when it releases this Friday (9/13) on VOD.