Dark Places

Dark Places was interesting but not as riveting as I had hoped. I never had a chance to read the book - because the movie came out very early in France - so I watched the film with fresh eyes not knowing what I was in for. Problem solver that I am, I watched the film looking for clues but I fairly quickly had all the right suspects lined up before I even got through a quarter of the movie. I don't know if it's a testament to my "mad" deductive skills or a lack of mystery in the story telling. The exact same thing happened to me with Gone Girl - the book - which is why I didn't finish reading it. I guess I was hopping for more of a challenge with Dark Places, something that would have surprised me at the end.

Anyway, I still enjoyed the film, particularly how Libby's past memories were shot. They had an 1980s feel to them, I mean in the quality of the images, they had an old VHS tape look to them. They were grainy and shaky, which also gave them an horror movie vibe, while at the same time illustrating how Libby feels about them.

The film is like the title suggest dark, and I'm not just talking about the murders but the whole context the characters are in. It's socially realistic, you really feel for the struggling mother (Christina Hendricks) and her kids, the poverty and the hardship of their situation is almost palpable and that's thanks to Hendricks' performance. The rest of the cast is good but Christina Hendricks and Corey Stoll stand out and elevate the film.

So to me Dark Places really depicts how prejudices, despair, and a bunch of white lies can snow ball and change people's lives forever. It's definitely not thriller of the year but the film is not boring. @wornoutspines

I thought the film had a lot of really cool twist and turns that kept me guessing all the way to the end.

There were a lot of layers too it that did not jumble up on you to become too complicated. I guess the story was flushed out quite well by the filmmaker.

The film had a lot of cool elements too.

Charlize Theron plays Libby Day, the lone survivor of a massacre done by her brother of their entire family. Twenty years later, a convention of geeks that love serial killers, lead by Nicolas Hoult, contact her and pay her to help them prove that her brother did not do it. Even though she said he did Twenty years ago.

The movie lives up to the title. It points out how low a person can get on many different levels.

Good watch.

Based on the novel by Gillian Flynn, Dark Places is about the gruesome massacre of Patty Day (Christina Hendricks) and her two young daughters on a fateful night of 1985 at their country farmhouse in Kansas. There were two members of the household that survived the death fest, Patty's 14 year old son Ben and her youngest daughter Libby, 8 years old. Ben, who was then accused of participating in cult and anti-Christ practices and child molestation in a day care school, is arrested on the charges of mass murder, doesn't protest or appeal and Libby corroborated the charges in the courtroom.

Cut to 28 years later, Ben is still serving his life sentence and Libby (Charlize Theron) does nothing in particular having extinguished all the social financial support and the royalty earned from the sale of the book published to narrate the events of the Day family tragedy. She is now contacted by Lyle Wirth (Nicolas Hoult) who is acting on behalf of a group of investigators and journalists who believe that Ben was wrongfully punished for the crimes he didn't commit. Unwilling to cooperate initially, Libby is lured into leading the investigation that could potentially falsify her own judgement, memories and statements from her childhood because she sees financial benefits from the deal. As she reconnects with Ben and follows certain leads with the help of Lyle, she slowly starts to uncover the truth behind her dark past and a secret that devastated her family and led to the brutal murders.

Dark Places is perhaps not as cutting edge a thriller as Flynn's other novels like Sharp Objects or Gone Girl are, but certainly plays hard on human psychology, projecting the dark, complex and disturbing aspects of our minds. The suspense is baffling in the end although not really overwhelming and devastating. Charlize Theron shines in her role of the disturbed, indifferent and hardened Libby that was once a lovable little girl.

A lot of people compare Dark Places to Gone Girl and say, book-wise, Gone Girl was the better book. I actually liked Dark Places better, so when I found out they were making it into a movie, I was of course skeptical about whether or not it'd be good. I just finished watching it and was happy that my skepticism was for naught - this movie stayed true to the book. Casting was done well and the flow proved that the screenplay writers & director paid attention to the original book.

The book is dark, has some twists and turns and doesn't gloss over anything. Where in Gone Girl I felt like some scenes were made a little lighter for the screen, Dark Places doesn't have that issue. The sets were also very accurate - it's been YEARS since I read the book, but while watching the movie everything came back to me...the layout of the farm house, the crappy apartment Libby lived in as an adult with her collection of stolen items...all the way down to crap hole Runner was living in...

This is not going to be a big blockbuster. Most people will not like it (as you can tell by the ratings) but I will tell you, if you like thrillers/mysteries with twists and turns then watch it. If you've read the book, watch it. It's not the greatest movie ever done, but it was good enough that I felt compelled to write my first IMDb review.

And even if you don't watch the movie, read the book. If you like Patterson, Demille or Clancy, you'll like Dark Places.

Ungodly and sinister, Gillian Flynn's Dark Places is just as devilish as you hope.

Again Gillian Flynn takes inspiration from the headlines, this time Dark Places sheds unsettling and ominous light on the famed mass murders that capture society's attention.

When Libby Day (Charlize Theron) was just seven years old, she was the lone survivor and he family was viciously murdered in what the media claimed was a satanic occult sacrifice at the desolate farmhouse in Kansas. Her brother Ben, just fifteen at the time, was found to be guilty. Twenty-five years later, in desperate need of cash and with no way to get it except capitalize and exploit her seedy past, she allows an organization obsessed with real life murders investigate the case with her help, as they hope to exonerate Ben. As she investigates her past, she opens old wounds and uncovers things about her life she had long since buried deep in her soul.

Not being able to speak of the novel, the Dark Places as a film does a great job of leading you on myriad paths of misdirection. The audience desperately following leads and evidence to discover the truth of what happened that fateful night in the when a family was brutally murdered, leaving two surviving siblings left standing when the carnage stopped. The multi-layered story is well paced and realistically utilizes real life murders and victims for a believable interpretation of a crime.

Gillian Flynn and her fellow screenwriter of the adaptation, Gilles Paquet-Brenner, do a marvelous job of refusing to resort to lazy exposition, showing rather than telling. The result is an engaging mystery that garners your full attention in the hopes you might be able to deduce the truth of the heinously bloody murders. Paquet-Brenner does double duty in directing the film, and translates the subject matter with cohesively gritty and complementary cinematography.

It seems as though fans of the novel were a bit disappointed in the casting for this film, that Theron does not match the physicality of Flynn's written description. Not knowing this fact, Charlize Theron is flawless as the tortured lead Libby. Her Libby and the medley of supporting characters are gripping and match the brutal content of the film.

Dark Places is a satisfying mystery that tells of savage desperation and sadistic cold-hearted murder. Given the weak and bland thrillers of recent years that shy away from the truly horrifying callous of human nature, fans of the genre should be pleased.

7.5/10 Please check our website for full reviews of all the recent releases.