Dark River

SPOILER: A welcome change from the British film industry away from lame comedies and its obsession with the plight of minorities and urban dramas to this excellent but disturbing Northern masterpiece. You certainly won't leave the cinema uplifted but if you're a drama fan you'll be well satisfied. I was more shocked than I thought I would to see the lasting effect of child abuse. This is really the foundation of the film which shows how the effects of a dark family secret can resonate for ever. Some excellent strong performances by the actors. This is a very visual film and the use of audio to enhance the impact of the scenes is well worth a special mention.

My rating 8/10 Highly recommended if you like powerful dramas

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.

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.

It's a sad story of family trauma and an attempt to go home many years later. The photography is superb. The acting is powerful. It works very well as a film overall. I don't want to say any more at the risk of spoiling it for you if you haven't yet seen it but it is well worth watching.

As for the negative reviews, I suggest you ignore them. This was never intended to be a super-hero action movie. It's a drama and it does what it sets out to do very well.

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.