“Millie Lies Low” is a next-level cringe-comedy from Kiwi Country, a New Zealand goof on the Deep Fake lives the savvy among us can live on social media when our real lives are coming off the rails.

It begins with a panic attack, even though Millie (Any Scotney) insists “I NEVER have those!”

She’s boarded the plane. She’s heading to New York, to an internship that it seems everybody knows about, a Wellington uni student about to make all of New Zealand proud, or so the magazine and TV coverage would have you believe.

Bit of pressure? You bet. But the moment she gets off that plane, everything gets worse.

Her problems multiply and her “solutions” are to cover them up. She lies to try and get a discount on the very expensive ticket she has to replace, lies to try and get a store-front loan to cover it and posts that first “lie” on social media — a screen-cap of an airplane window, a post about “the adventure” that begins with her “step into the next chapter of my life.”

We start to get the picture. The panic attack that Millie “never” has is a reckoning, or a fear of a reckoning. All her chickens are coming home to roost.

Director and co-writer Michelle Savill’s sparkling debut is the dark side of “fake it until you make it.” It dances between grimaces and giggles as Millie would rather sleep in the airport, or sleep in the department lounge at her old university, sleep on the street or steal back the car she “gave” to her best friend and fellow architect-wannabe, Carolyn (Jillian Nguyen).

Millie can raid her old apartment and dumpster dive for backdrops to her New York selfies or Facetime calls. A subway map poster’s an unusual bit of decor for an actual New Yorker’s apartment, Carolyn notices. No no, check out the “exposed brick” (just a wall in an alley) feature in this building.

She DIYs a disguise to sneak into a graduation party at her old place, dodging the boyfriend (Chris Alosio) she ditched to take this “next big step.” She hits up her sickly Mum (Alice May Connolly) for cash, raids her fridge when she’s not at home and secretly camps out in in the woods behind her backyard so she can use her wifi to post the next lie.

Because Millie lies like she breathes. Millie feels like a fraud because she might very well be. And in disguise, or stalking Carolyn or whoever, she overhears what people really think of her and how they see through her.

That “panic attack” wasn’t over flying.

Scotney (“Cousins,” “Bad Behaviour”) is a terrific reactor here, playing a young woman with the resourcefulness to get through architecture school (with some shortcuts) and the native cunning to fake an entire trek to New York on the fly.

Scotney’s face barely masks the turmoil inside of Millie, her personal disappointment, her terror of disappointing others, her bitterness at realizing she isn’t fooling anyone and at the way her lies and rash impulses ripple out among others, hurting them and creating layers of collateral damage.

And she lets us pity this frightened coed, even if she’s getting at least a little of what she deserves.

It’s a marvelous performance in a dark comedy that never lets us believe that it’s “always darkest before the dawn,” not where Millie’s concerned. There’s always another bad decision to make, another half-assed excuse to offer, another “t” she’s forgotten to cross but that we can guess as “Millie Lies Low” until all this blows over.

Rating: unrated, sex, nudity

Cast: Ana Scotney, Jillian Nguyen, Chris Alosio, Sam Cotton, and Alice May Connolly

Credits: Directed by Michelle Savill, scripted by Eli Kent, Michelle Savill. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:40