Through the Glass Darkly

Picked this up in the supermarket regrettably. A slow-burning suspense thriller you'd say but disappointing. The opening ten minutes or so looked promising and after that lacklustre. Too much screen time for the lead plain Jane, overly pushed accents got in the way, voiceover from the head somewhat off-putting.

You get up to the first sherif scene and it's silly. Bar scene after laughable. Poor editing throughout, aimed for eerie and mysterious yet didn't come off and so cinematically not good. Just too much wrong with the execution from the actors and the director.

Also, is the lead meant to be with the other younger woman or what because that wasn't very interesting either. Queue more annoying characters, some flashbacks, just a no from me.

Blake Lively stars as Charlie. Her young daughter went missing a year ago and there is still no trace of her. Charlie believes she is not getting help from the police because she is in a lesbian relationship.

Charlie is having trouble remembering things. The medication she is taking makes her see things that aren't real, and soon she finds it difficult to distinguish between reality and her visions. When another young girl, Elodie Carmichael, goes missing, she is convinced there is a connection, and a conspiracy going on in town. All evidence point to Trip Carmichael (Michael Trucco), but Charlie herself becomes a suspect.

This mystery thriller is a bit slow moving and also not quite as interesting as I would have liked it to be. It is a heartbreaking story of loss, longing, heartache, and illness. The climax is a bit confusing, though. 'Through the Glass Darkly' is a well made film with good performances, but I doubt I'm going to remember it.

Low-budget yes, but I was interested in the story and its conclusion. I felt the direction was good, and the actors did their jobs well. There is a plot twist half way through, but really the film is half whodunnit, half straightforward thriller.

The problem must be marketing. Jennifer Lawrence played a similar character in a similar movie and she needed a golf cart to carry home all the awards she got. Lively, known mainly for TV, gives a performance that holds the attention. In fact the entire movie is technically perfect and it engages quite well. In the 1940s this would have been a classic "noir." ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

Stop becoming confused by this gerontopsychological thriller, abouta disappearance, and then another one in a small community deep in the southern heartlands, with hardwood meadows and hills that makes everything look so dusk and dark even in daylight.

The next confusement is what youre meant to believe as flashbacks, that must be a hillbillie moment for every dementiadamned movieviewer, and the lack of timeline really make you feel loosing track on time.

The most confusive moment for a grumpy old man was the shapeshifting and all pivoting moment of the plot, no further elaboration to that.

Its a complex movie, its filled with a lot of ''you never know for sure'' moments, it has intensity, but lack the deepness of true life and real life human behavioral demeanors. Its like the fog of war, whos the friend and whos the foe, the choice of shapeshifting methods could be discussed, should they cast another actor or use some more advanced make up. Also the law enforcement has some dramatic and fatal glitches, usually in a omnious setting an officer would actually shoot before the weapon is drawn (ive watched to many bodycam documentaries).

Allthough confused i can tell that the filmo and editingtablecraftmanship is of high standard, and it has a happy ending...i think...or are there still some secrets/ swines hidden between the logs. Im still standing on the pivots crankshaft on recommending...