Dark River

There's no question Ruth Wilson has superb charisma on screen and her co-star Mark Stanley is excellent as well, but this film gives the viewer, in my opinion, little room to "come up for air", as the storyline is just relentlessly dark and bleak. I thought the writer and director here Clio Bernard's 2013 movie The Selfish Giant was powerful and memorable, but her latest film is just too muddled and depressing for my tastes.

Let me start on a positive note, the acting in this movie is very good. Ruth Wilson in particular, as always, played her role spot on. But I'm sad to say that's the only thing this movie has going for it. There is really no real storyline, unless I missed something? It's very vague and suggests that there was trauma in the woman's past, aside from that it's an hour and a half of an unstable man having mental breakdowns and yelling at people. But I blame none of this on the actors, the directors and writers should have added something. At the end of this movie I feel like I'm in the same place as when I watched the trailer prior, and I really wanted to like this one, it was supposed to be fantastic and Ruth Wilson is perfect in all her films and shows.

I give this a 6/10 based solely on Wilson's performance, otherwise I would give it a 3/10

Ruth Wilson puts in a strong performance in 'Dark River', playing a young farmer who inherits her family's troubled legacy. She's good, but the film never completely escapes its "grim up north" sensibility, as a story unfolds of unmitigated harshness in a world inhabited only the by the terminally taciturn. One can credit the writers for not tossing in a throwaway romance; but without hope, it's hard to sustain the interest of the audience.

This gets right down into the roots of northern farming. A great cast and exceptional performances from Ruth Wilson and Mark Stanley, who play siblings at loggerheads.

The film itself is quite dark. Everyday is pretty much grey and dull to fit the mood for the film. It's filmed beautifully, exactly what you would expect in the lovely northern countryside.

I really enjoyed the story, I felt it got deep down into a family feud that included abuse and regret. Very well written.

If it had a better script, a better telling of the story and a better director this could have been a great film, instead it is just a farming fighting siblings plod along, sometimes hard to understand the accents, and with a lot of films that don't actually tell you what going to happen, but you can sort of work it out, well with this there is no working out, the whole story line is flawed, and there is not enough dialogue to help you understand the full story. Shame really Ruth Wilson does a fantastic job, if one did not know better she could have been that person, and not a film star, the rest of the cast did what they had to do with such a bad script...........Great scenery, mostly filmed i think in North Yorkshire.