Dark Places

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.

This film tells the story of a woman whose mother and her two sisters were murdered on their farm at night. Her brother is convicted of murdering the three family members. She gets contacted by a club that is intrigued by mysterious murders, and she is forced to confront her multilayered traumatic past.

"Dark Places" is a truly haunting drama that keeps me captivated thoroughly. Viewers are lead to believe from the beginning that there is something Libby is not completely honest about. As more of the past is revealed in flashbacks, and even more of the past is unravelled through various interviews, the shocking truth is finally revealed. The ending is very poignant. I really feel for Libby and Ben, who have squandered almost thirty years away. They could have lived and loved, but they let naïveté get in the way big time. I do hope more people will watch this film. I think it's very well done, and it leaves me wondering all the would haves and could haves in the plot.

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.

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 didn't care much for Gone Girl -- maybe it was Ben Affleck -- but I was drawn to this movie despite that. Maybe it was Charlize Theron, maybe it was Nicholas Hoult, whom I have enjoyed watching grow into a first rate actor since his days in Skins. In any case, whatever reservations I had at first rapidly dissolved into a distant memory as the first ten minutes passed.

Usually I roll my eyes at flashback-driven efforts, but not so with Dark Places. Each switch back to 1985 is like the tumblers on a lock giving that satisfying click as you pick it, breeding anticipation and certainty that there is a rich reward at the end for your efforts, every scene evoking a subtle revelation that drives the story onward.

Well cast, well scored, well directed, Dark Places deserves more recognition than it has garnered. If I had to point out one flaw, it would be a forgivable one; MISFITS swag was not that easy to come by in 1985.