Unbelievable
2021 · 15m · USA
Directed by Max Novick
Genres: drama, romance, thriller
Tones: dark, provocative, tense
A charming young man fabricates an elaborate web of lies about his identity and background in order to date a woman he's fallen for, building a relationship on a foundation that threatens to collapse at any moment.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Most people would've made this a cute rom-com about a white lie that gets forgiven—Novick instead weaponizes the premise into genuine psychological horror, turning every text and dinner date into a ticking bomb. It's the kind of subversive genre move that makes you realize the real thriller was always hiding in the dating app all along.
Novick demonstrates formal control in how the film's tonal architecture shifts from romantic setup to dread, situating itself in a lineage of intimate psychological dramas that understand how relationship dynamics can mirror unreliable narration itself.
The decision to stay mostly in the perpetrator's perspective rather than pivot to the woman's discovery creates an unbearable tension that a higher-budget thriller would've squandered—that structural choice is what makes the small-scale deception feel genuinely suffocating.
Reviews
He Lied About Everything Just to Date Her
Award Winning Psychological Thriller