‘The Lie: The Murder of Grace Millane’ Documentary Uses Security Footage to Paint a Chilling Portrait of a Monster

The Lie: The Murder of Grace Millane introduces the phenomenon of the “rough sex defense” and how one man’s attempt to use it blows up in his face.

Director Helena Coan’s documentary The Lie: The Murder of Grace Millane follows the final hours of a British tourist’s short life, just before she would have celebrated her 22nd birthday in 2018. On a gap year backpacking through New Zealand, Grace Millane meets up with a Tinder date and is never seen nor heard from again.

Struggling to remember this particular news story? That’s an underlying point of this gripping documentary, that Millane’s murder sounds like so many other tragedies of “women doing things alone,” reminiscent of the UK’s Sarah Everard, whose only crime was walking home and encountering a police officer—the very person who should have been protecting her.

Coan’s doc reveals itself like a horror film, as we watch security footage of Millane meeting up with Jesse Shane Kempson, in what looks like so many casual Tinder dates you might see every day. We watch them flirt at a bar. We watch her text a friend to say she really liked this guy. Then, we watch her walk around a corner with him. Then, we watch her in the elevator up to his room. THEN, we see him the next day in the elevator, alone, enroute to purchase a new roller bag. It is truly chilling, especially the second-by-second discomfort of watching the footage in real-time.

Of course, what is “The Lie” in question? It’s the fact that after Kempson discovers the police are on to him, he tells them that he and Millane had consensual sex, but that she wanted to engage in bondage (the “Fifty Shades” defense), and that their rough sex play accidentally resulted in her death. Sure, it’s a compelling defense (although wouldn’t he have called 911 right away?), but the cameras don’t lie—including the footage of him on another Tinder date with a woman, hours after he murdered Millane, with her body still in his room.

Coan doesn’t delve too deeply into the phenomenon of the “Fifty Shades” or “rough sex” defense, focusing on this specific case instead, but in the epilogue, she notes that in the past 50 years, 60 UK defendants have used it as a strategy on trial, and 45% of the time, it resulted in a lesser charger, lighter sentence, acquittal, or the case being tossed out. It would have been interesting to explore these other cases and how they might shed light on this one, but it’s understandable why the focus stays on Millane. While her story serves as a reminder that women can never safely just exist in the world, with the rise of surveillance, it also shows that predators can’t either.

THE LIE: THE MURDER OF GRACE MILLANE releases in select theaters and On Demand on March 29.