The best of the genre are movies like Gaslight, Wait Until Dark and, more recently, Sleeping With the Enemy and What Lies Beneath.

The setup in White Lies, opening today at the Princess Theatre, is excellent. When Liz Bartlet (Monika Schnarre) is accosted in an underground parking garage, she is convinced her former husband is out for revenge because it was her testimony that put him behind bars for robbery. Liz confides some of her fears to her best friend Barbara Tate (Erika Eleniak) and reveals that she is going to hide out in a remote cabin she is considering purchasing. Barbara invites herself along to give her friend some moral support.

They get to the cabin only to find themselves snowbound in a freak storm. And they're not alone. Someone has been following them and is stalking the cabin. It could be the former jailbird himself, or one of his hired cronies. It might even be the local busybody (Jann Arden). But there's one thing for certain. Whoever is out there wants something desperately enough to terrorize Liz and Barbara until they give up. Not everyone in the cast will live to learn exactly who wants what from whom and why.

White Lies rises above the routine thriller because Schnarre and Eleniak invest their performances with the requisite heightened melodrama. Arden adds some comic relief but is not given nearly enough screen time. Her character should have been much more of a red herring than writer George Ferris and director Ruben Preuss allow her to be. What Ferris and Preuss manage to pull off are some rather satisfying Sleuth and Deathtrap- style plot twists that will test the skill of armchair detectives.