From the beloved E. Lockhart book of the same name, We Were Liars is the highly anticipated Prime Video adaptation developed by Julie Plec and Carina Adly Mackenzie. With an all star cast featuring Emily Alyn Lind, Caitlin FitzGerald, Mamie Gummer, Candice King, Rahul Kohli, Shubham Maheshwari, Esther McGregor and Australian actor Joseph Zada, We Were Liars is a compelling psychological thriller that questions privilege, family ties, and trusting your own memories.
The story follows 17-year-old Cadence Sinclair (Lind), who comes from the affluent Sinclair family. Her grandfather, Harris Sinclair (David Morse), owns an island off of Martha’s Vineyard called Beechwood Island, where Cadence and her family spend their summers. After a tragic accident in Summer ’16 (which is how Cadence references each summer year), Cadence loses her memory and we watch as she struggles to piece together what happened to her.
The eight episode limited series captures all the tropes of a psychological drama, while still maintaining an innocent and childlike nature that emulates the characters we see on screen. While there were moments in the show that felt rushed and unfinished, the twist at the very end makes this show worth pursuing all the way through.
We get to watch the complicated and intricate family dynamics of the Sinclairs unfold through every episode. Following the parents, Harris and Tipper Sinclair (Wendy Crewson), whose views of society and the community around them can’t help but be jaded by their wealth and their ways of living; their three daughters, Carrie (Gummer), Penny (FitzGerald), and Bess (King), whose different personalities consistently clash when it comes to money, relationships, and the need to please their parents at any given time; and their children, Carrie’s two sons, Johnny (Zada) and Will (Brady Droulis), Gat (Maheshwari), the nephew of Carrie’s partner Ed (Kohli), Penny’s only daughter Cadence, and Bess’s three daughters, Mirren (McGregor), Liberty (Manaia Wall) and Bonnie (Emerson MacNeil). Despite the convoluted and plentiful characters we get to watch on screen, as the title implies, we’re focussed more on the liars, who consist of Cadence, Mirren, Johnny, and Gat, and what happened to them in Summer 16 through the eyes of Cadence.
It can be difficult with a cast that large to give every character their flowers, especially having to build on each of them throughout a short eight episode series, while still pushing the story along. But We Were Liars does a good job at making audiences care for each family member, no matter how big or small their role is. While their motives aren’t always the smartest, or well intentioned, we somewhat understand each character and why they do what they have to because we’ve been given an insight into their worlds and how they view themselves in it. But a misstep here may be the fact that you feel more invested in the Sinclair sisters rather than “The Liars”, where the adult storylines are more fleshed out and feel more tangible than the children’s. We get an inkling of how broken and jagged the Sinclair sisters’ lives are due to their upbringing, and you crave more of that on screen, if only to get more context on why and how their children ended up the way they did.
The show also highlights important themes of belonging, racism, prejudice, greed, family, and trauma. These themes are heavily scattered throughout the show, but they never really feel like they come to fruition by the end of the series. This could very well just be due to the short eight episode series and the abundance of themes they’re trying to accomplish, or the shift in the adaptation of the book; Lockart’s story spanning multiple summers, rather than just Summer 16 and Summer 17 as featured here.
But the twist at the very end of the show is heart wrenching and almost painful. Along with Cadence, you begin to remember what happened in Summer 16, and when you slowly start to understand what the accident took from Cadence, your heart can’t help but break and ache at the realisation alone.
We Were Liars is a great watch for those who love a psychological drama that dives deep into complex human emotions. While the show can be slow and feel a bit misguided, the twist at the end is shocking enough to make up for what the show lacks.
THREE AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
All 8 episodes of We Were Liars available to stream now on Prime Video.
