We Were Liars

This 8-part miniseries hit Prime streaming yesterday. My wife and I settled in and watched the first two episodes.

The biggest issue is nothing much happens in the first two episodes. The main character has an incident she doesn't remember at the end of episode one. Then most of episode two is flashing back and forward to understand why her family and friends reacted the way they did. And juveniles trying to sort out boy-girl issues. Sort of a teenage soap opera.

One reviewer wrote "flat, nonengaging", another wrote "lazy writing, lazy cast saying lazy lines." That pretty well captures this limited series. A story that might have been told well in a 90-minute movie is stretched to roughly 8 hours and the filmmakers expect us to devote all that time with just the HOPE that it will turn out entertaining and worthwhile.

Well, not for us. After giving it almost 24 hours to set in my wife and I both decided we had no interest in sticking with it.

However a week later I did watch the last episode just to see how they tried to tie things up. In fact I found it to be very interesting and I was surprised at what all had happened. I will go so far as to state, if a viewer doesn't want to spend 8 hours on the whole series then watching episodes 1, 2, and 8 can be pretty entertaining.

But one can tell, from the episode synopses provided by Prime for each episode, most of the filler time involves teenage soap-opera types of topics. That wasn't of much interest to us grandparents.

Watching We Were Liars felt like being lured into a dream only to realize, far too late, that it was a nightmare. It's sun-drenched and pretty on the outside-Cape Cod vibes, golden-hour dinners, old money elegance-but beneath all that gloss is guilt, trauma, and a twist that genuinely left me stunned even knowing what was coming.

If you're going in blind: good. This story wants to break your heart.

✅ What Worked for Me

1. That dreamy aesthetic masks real tragedy The island is a character all on its own-gorgeous, isolated, haunting. The cinematography is stunning and almost too perfect... which, of course, is the point.

2. Sadie Sink as Cadence = inspired casting She carries this film. You feel her confusion, her hunger for truth, and that quiet ache underneath every interaction. The way she plays memory loss and emotional unraveling is subtle and devastating.

"We are liars. We are beautiful and privileged. We are cracked and broken."

3. The twist still lands Even if you've read the book, the way the film builds to it-slowly, with these eerie flashes of memory and tension-made it work all over again.

4. The score is haunting The music walks that tightrope between nostalgic and unnerving. Piano melodies over painful flashbacks? Brutal.

❌ What Didn't Land as Well

1. Some characters feel too thin Gat, Johnny, and Mirren (the other "Liars") don't get enough screen time to feel fully fleshed out. You get glimpses, sure-but if you haven't read the book, you might not connect as deeply.

2. The pacing drags a little mid-film The second act meanders as Cady tries to piece things together. Some repetition could've been trimmed for tighter momentum.

3. Voiceover-heavy moments feel too bookish A few lines work better on the page than out loud. At times, it feels like the script is trying too hard to stay "poetic."

🌟 Final Thoughts

7 out of 10 We Were Liars doesn't just tell you a story-it makes you question everything you just saw, and everything you believed. It's a sun-soaked tragedy wrapped in a mystery, and when the pieces finally fall into place, it leaves you gutted in the best way. It's not a "twist movie"-it's a memory movie. And it lingers.

I knew the ending. It still broke me.

🎥 If You Liked This, You Might Also Enjoy: 1. The Summer I Turned Pretty - Romance, nostalgia, and messy emotions

2. Dead Poets Society - Youth, tragedy, and secrets kept too long

3. Before I Fall (2017) - Guilt, time loops, and emotional unraveling

4. Atonement (2007) - Another sunlit story that cuts you deep

5. Sharp Objects (HBO) - Secrets, trauma, and a woman on the edge.

The four major roles - Cady, Gat, Mirrin and Johnny are cast with actors that are too old to play 16-year-old teenagers. Shubham Maheshwari, who plays Gat, is 29. The actresses who play Cady and Mirrin are 23 and the actor who plays Johnny is 20. The carriage and maturity between a 16-year- old and a 23-year-old is very different. It shows.

The mothers are only 10 years older than their actor children. Again, it shows.

The other thing that is unrealistic is how money grubbing the three sister's characters are. If they hate each other so much, they wouldn't spend the summer's together. And not every person with money just wants money. The patriarch is also a horrible person, also all about money. I think the author or screenwriters are writing about a world they don't know or understand. Very shallow writing.

The scenery is pretty, the premise bizarre. Issues that could have been explored were ignored. Other issues - like grief, privilege and race were dealt with badly.

This show is not convincing on so many levels, so I say - it is a miss.

After reading a lot of negative reviews, I did not expect much from this series. I'm not familiar with the book at all, so I went in watching this with no idea what it was about.. I felt the first few episodes were pretty slow, and I actually was fast-forwarding a bit. The ending made up for the slow story. I did not see that coming at all.

It also leaves an open for a season 2 , which I would definitely watch.

The acting is pretty good, especially the four teenagers. I've never seen any of them in anything else. The three sisters were annoying. I think one of them was Meryl Streep's daughter. I binged this in 2 days and I recommend giving it a try without all the haters reviews.

I grew up as one of the "poorer" cousins to old money from the east, so I am very familiar with the mindset, settings, attitudes, and behaviors of the wealthy. So far this does, in fact, portray them accurately. Yes they pretend to be perfect, but are far from it in reality. Maybe they're not portrayed favorably, as some critics would hope for, but accurately. I'm not here for that though, what I am here for is the mystery of regaining memories, rediscovering family, and character growth/development. Even though some people seem to be too idealistic in their views of the world, that's how some people are. I didn't get the sense that this show is being preachy at all. One character's views are not propped up as the only correct view. People believe different things, share different insights, get upset over petty issues, and it all comes together in a kaleidoscope of personalities. And "news flash" most people are disgusting, fallible, and stupid, whether they are in a trailer park, or in a mansion. It's just that some mask it better than others, and some try to control things so much to overcompensate for it, that the control bleeds over into invading the lives of others. I think if anything, so far, the show tells us that lies have consequences, no matter who you are. That is universal.