Dark Places (2015) User Reviews (158)

Always skeptical about a movie based on a good book - was not disappointed...

[skitzavolly15 · 7/10 · 1 August 2015]

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.

I like it, thought it was a great murder mystery.

[subxerogravity · 7/10 · 12 August 2015]

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.

Decent And Enjoyable Enough

[dfa120374 · 6/10 · 29 December 2015]

Dark Places (like a lot of movies, I guess) won't be everyone's cup of tea as it's a pretty slow-paced Thriller that concentrates on a decent cast delivering a good story. If you're more into faster-paced films then you more than likely won't enjoy this.

The story sees Charlize Theron play Libby Day, a young woman who believes that her brother brutally killed her mother and sister when she was 8-years-old. When Lyle Wirth (played by Nicholas Hoult), a member of a crime investigative group, manages to get in touch with Libby, and starts to provide possible evidence on what actually happened, Libby starts to doubt her own recollection of what actually happened that fateful day.

The story may sound a bit dull & unoriginal, but it plays out better than it initially sounds, and it also gets better as it unravels. It's also a story that you have to pay attention to, especially with the flash backs as there is no immediate indication the flash backs have started (but it doesn't take a genius to figure out when a flashback scene is being played). So, with the jumping back & forward from past to present, you do need to watch it carefully to get what is fully going on. Also, while there is no twist as such, the story does keep you guessing as to how it will pan out.

The cast all do a decent job with their individual parts as well, from Theron's performance as Libby Day, a woman who finds it hard to trust anyone and has become a bit of a recluse, to Chloë Grace Moretz's performance of a young manipulative Diondra. Put a decent cast in to deliver a decent story and you have yourself a pretty enjoyable movie.

As I mentioned earlier, it is a pretty slow-paced Thriller, and while I don't mind watching these, there were a few scenes where I thought it dragged a wee bit, but for the most part it is interesting and enjoyable enough.

It's not the best film you'll ever see, but Dark places is a good film that is definitely worth a watch.

A captivating film

[Gordon-11 · 13 August 2015]

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.

shine your light on Dark Places

[locatordave · 7/10 · 5 August 2015]

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.

Another gripping mystery filled crime drama?

[Garcwrites · 7/10 · 10 April 2015]

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

Lifeless and Emotionless Drama about Destroyed Lives

[claudio_carvalho · 6/10 · 19 February 2016]

Libby Day (Charlize Theron) is a lifeless woman that survived a massacre of her family in their farmhouse in the countryside of Kansas when she was eight that has been living from donations and lectures ever since. Thirty years ago, the police believed that a satanic cult was the responsible of the murder of her mother and two sisters, and her brother Ben (Corey Stoll) was convicted with her testimony in court. On the present days, her acquaintance Lyle Wirth (Nicholas Hoult) invites Libby to visit "The Kill Club", where amateurs investigate famous crimes, and she finds that they believe Ben is innocent. Libby needs money and accepts to revisit the slaughter of her family and comes up to the painful revelations and the ultimate truth.

"Dark Places" is a lifeless and emotionless drama about destroyed lives. The story is very dark and the cast is excellent. However, the screenplay that entwines present and past could have been much better and the direction misses the opportunity to make a powerful drama. Charlize Theron performs a totally unpleasant character, cynical, lazy and greedy. The conclusion does not bring any emotion to the viewer. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Lugares Escuros" ("Dark Places")

Watch the film or read the book, but I don't recommend both

[Coventry · 6/10 · 31 May 2015]

This is the first time – ever – that I'm able to write in a review that I read the book before I watched the film! I'm an avid movie fanatic and not much of a book reader, but for some reason I read both Gillian Flynn novels (this one as well as "Gone Girl") before they were turned into Hollywood movies with an all-star cast. "Dark Places" is clearly not as successful as "Gone Girl", because the release got pushed back a couple of times and this one isn't likely to ever end up in the IMDb top 250. Now, I always disliked that typical and clichéd statement: "the book is much better than the film", but I must admit that there's truth in it… Director Gilles Paquet-Brenner's screenplay adaptation is very loyal to Flynn's novel, and thus the basic subject matter is tense and unsettling, but for some inexplicable reason the book is compelling whereas the film is rather tedious… "Dark Places" tells the story of Libby Day. At the tender age of 7, Libby witnessed how her mother and two sisters were brutally slain in their Kansas farm at night, and she confirmed to the authorities that her 15-year-old brother Ben was the culprit. 28 years later, Libby understandably grew up to become an angry, secluded and insecure woman. Driven by financial issues, Libby accepts the peculiar Lyle's offer to attend a meeting of the Kill Club. This bizarre collective exists of people who're investigating infamous (and unsolved) murder cases, and they are convinced that Ben Day is innocent. Reluctant at first, Libby begins to unravel the mystery of what exactly happened on the awful night that ruined her life. The search confronts her with her imprisoned brother and her estranged father, but also brings new secrets to the surface about her mother Patty and her brother's long lost high- school girlfriend Diondra.

It's very strange and difficult to describe, but every new plot twist or revelation that was captivating in the book comes across as implausible in the film. Especially the character of the mother, Patty Day, was much more powerful in the novel. Her hopelessness and desperation isn't properly transferred to the screen and therefore a couple of essential twists near the end become downright unbelievable. Obviously this isn't the fault of the screenplay, because a book lends itself much better to describe emotions and mental states of mind in great detail. This is also the main reason why the protagonist character Libby never truly becomes the intriguing character she deserves to be. "Dark Places" definitely also suffers from a shortage of action, especially during the first hour, and the great potential of the "Kill Club" isn't elaborated properly enough (although that also wasn't the case in the book). Paquet-Brenner does, however, marvelously captivate the grim and depressing atmosphere of the Midwestern American slums and insolvent family farms. The performances are more than adequate as well, with particularly strong roles for Charlize Theron and Nicolas Hoult. Just a week ago, I also saw them act together in "Mad Max: Fury Road" but this is quite a different type of film. Christina Hendricks is amazing as the poor and pitiable single mother and I was also very surprised to see a strong role for Chloë Grace Moretz. "Dark Places" is a great book to read (personally I even preferred it over "Gone Girl) and the film is also definitely worth checking out, but I only recommend either reading the book or watching the film. Otherwise you're guaranteed to stumble upon the flaws more easily.

Dark Places Is Hard To Swallow

[clintstevens · 5/10 · 13 September 2018]

Dark Places is a quirky movie that pushes the boundaries of believability to the breaking point. The one plus is at least it's not one of Hollywood's usual rehashed remakes or a comic book hero saga, but that's about the extent of it's good points.

Charlize Theron is miscast as the main character, Libby Day, (but when you're the executive producer you can OK the casting of yourself in the lead role) and plays her like a mediocre copy of her 'Monster' character. Evidently, she has spent the past 28 years as a single, man-hating woman with a masculine swagger. Nicholas Hoult, who I always enjoy, has a minimal role here (which is a shame) as Lyle Worth, who portrays the leader of a 'kill club' that investigates old murders. Chloe Grace Moretz is spot-on as Diondra, the murdering pregnant girlfriend. She always seems to play creepy young females, and does so flawlessly.

Some of the unbelievable plot line questions (SPOILER ALERT)...why would Libby Day's brother prefer to spend nearly 30 years in prison protecting his girlfriend, who chokes his little sister to death? Why would Libby's mother decide to hire someone to kill her while her 3 young daughters are in the house? And speaking of the killer, how does someone get away with offering his services as a killer who assists in suicides so the victim's family can collect insurance money and apparently never gets caught, even though he appears to be well known for his specialty (does he have an ad in the yellow pages?)? How does the murdering girlfriend know that Libby called Lyle to come get her, and then disappears when he shows up? And apparently Diondra's daughter was just born bad, as her mother told her everything about her murderous past and she chooses to be her willing murdering accomplice.

Not the best who-done-it, but not the worst either.

Intriguing but Disappointing

[jaime-fins · 6/10 · 18 August 2015]

This movie is about a crime committed some 30 years ago where the mother and the sisters of Libby Day (Charlize Theron) and her brother, Ben, are murdered. She and her older brother were the only survivors of the crime but, due to the fact of his brother was involved with a satanic group, she blames him of committing it, they go to court and he admits the crime and he ends in the jail. Then, she became a national icon and she was sustained by donations she got during all her life. Thirty years after, most people have forgot about her and, she is almost broke and needs to find a way of getting money. Then, a group of amateurs that enjoy solving crimes and mysteries go in the encounter of the Libby Day saying that they believe his brother was not guilty and, in exchange of money, they ask for her help in finding the truth behind the murdering of her family. Libby Day starts the journey of remembering all the facts behind that night. She then starts to talk again with his brother and she's going after all the people that could know something about it.

During this part of the movie, you feel very connected to the story and very intrigued. The characters, they all seem very natural and the interpretation makes you believe the script.

The main problem of this movie, is how it ends. It has a very anticlimax ending and all theories that you came up during the movie they all fall down. Really poor creativity in here, you really find yourself thinking they didn't know how to end it.

So, although it had very positive things, I rated this movie 5 stars, because for me a movie is all about how it ends, and his one was ... poor!

If you've read the book and loved it, you will hate this movie. If you haven't, it's still a horribly boring movie.

[alden-mackie · 1/10 · 10 August 2015]

This movie does a huge disservice to the book. The screenwriter/director went on an ego trip and cut and/or drastically changed characters, changed the setting, and then did lip service to most of the major scenes. Some of the most pivotal scenes in the movie were present, but the setup for why they were important was never made, so when those scenes took place you were just sitting there going "meh."

Example - Ben shows up with dyed hair in the kitchen, but the reaction from the sisters is not nearly as volatile because there's no setup for their circumstances. They skipped over the sh*% storm of an environment that the mother returns to when she comes back with Diane. Later on, when you meet Ben Day as an adult, he is balding and his natural hair color is dark brown...completely eliminating the significance of the dye.

They took away all the suspense of the movie, every person you suspected of committing the murders in the book wasn't even suspicious in the movie. Long before the climactic scene, you knew who killed everyone and you didn't care. Then for some unknown reason they changed the end to something that is just incredibly boring.

Example - Lou Cates is presented as some scrawny average middle aged man, not intimidating at all, and except for some side comment by Lyle about him being arrested later for assault, you would never have known he had any kind of depth to him at all, but by the time you find that out, you don't care and he's never presented as a potential suspect.

None of the characters were properly developed; they were inconsistent with the book, and within the movie itself. Diondra was some sad emotional, but slightly manipulative girl whose only erratic behavior took place under the influence of drugs. How you go from that to what she does makes no sense at all, whereas in the book her actions were consistent with her character.

Other than a small example of kleptomania, Libby Day was never developed as the dark, disturbed person that Gillian Flynn wrote about. One of the primary agenda's of Gillian Flynn's writing is to show that women can be just as dark and twisted as your stereotypical dark male protagonist; this movie failed miserably in that.

Lastly, I'm not really sure what movie the other reviewers watched, but the acting was about as good your average lifetime network special. The scene at the Cates' house was particularly abysmal...no one was believable. Just a huge waste of an amazing book.

Slow but involving murder mystery

[abisio · 9/10 · 22 September 2015]

I did not read Dark Places nor Gone Girl (the other Flynn's book) but I can really said that movie is slow but captivating. Theron is as always excellent and modest. Her character does not shine like the female character in Gone Girl; in fact her character is really an accessory to the story that basically happens in flash backs.

As a murder mystery; the end is somewhat unexpected but not completely convincing; but it is obvious that the important thing was the sadness, misery and tough decisions some of the characters had to make and its consequences.

It is an interesting slow cooked movie; far from commercial but worth seeing anyway

Good solid whodunit

[gridoon2024 · 7/10 · 15 July 2015]

It's been a while since I've seen such a good old-fashioned whodunit on the big screen; the genre seems to be somewhat of a forgotten art in modern cinema. Compared to "Gone Girl", "Dark Places" is less flashy, less psychologically twisted, more down-to-earth, more plot-driven. It kept me wondering who-done-it until the end, and the solution is clever and unpredictable (let's just say there is a thin line between innocence and guilt in this movie). The narrative moves very smoothly and methodically between the present and the past, helped by a solid cast, well-selected in terms of the younger and the older actors who are called upon to play the same character (especially in the case of Chloë Grace Moretz and Andrea Roth). Recommended for fans of the genre. *** out of 4.

Going back

[Prismark10 · 4/10 · 8 February 2016]

With the success of Gone Girl, film producers have been scrambling to adapt other works from novelist Gillian Flynn.

However this adaptation of Dark Places by French Director Gilles Paquet-Brenner lacks the style, tension and panache of Dave Fincher's superior adaptation of Gone Girl.

Libby Day (Charlize Theron) as a 7 year old survived an attack on her family home which left her mother and two sisters dead. Her brother who was dabbling in drugs and Satanism was found guilty of the crimes.

Thirty decades later with cash running out Libby is persuaded by the prospect of money by amateur crime investigator (Nicholas Hoult) part of the Kill Club (who investigate true life crimes) to confront the past and that her brother may not had committed the crimes.

With the use of flashbacks we see events leading up to the crime and introduced to alternative suspects such as Libby's no good father or her brother's pregnant girlfriend.

The film tries to go for a grungy dirty look but even the 1980s flashbacks look insipid. The devil worship material is almost laughable and there is little that is noirish about this film. Theron has glammed down for the role and hides her million dollar haircut by wearing a cap but the film is just dull and downbeat.

Maybe the script could had taken some inspiration from Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and we could see a film of lives torn apart but what we get is just unstimulating.

Production/Reception Problems Don't Nearly Sink This One (Despite Their Best Efforts)

[zkonedog · 7/10 · 28 February 2017]

A few years ago, Gillian Flynn's novel "Gone Girl" was turned into a film that received Academy Award consideration. While I won't go so far as to say that "Dark Places" is quite as good as that one, there must have been something going on behind the scenes in the production that really hampered its marketing. It doesn't nearly deserve the terrible reputation it is receiving right now.

For a basic plot summary, "Dark Places" tells the story of Libby Day (Charlize Theron), a woman still haunted by the memory of a childhood incident in which her brother murdered the rest of the family...or did he? Down to her last dollar and no longer able to exploit public sympathy, Libby hooks on with a group of murder investigators/enthusiasts led by Lyle Wirth (Nicholas Hoult), who pay her to re-examine that infamous past night. The lead-up to the massacre is told in flash-backs, featuring Ben Day (Tye Sheridan & Corey Stoll) as the supposed killer and mother Patty (Christine Hendricks) as the mother hanging on by a thread. What really happened that night? That won't be determined until the final memories begin falling into place.

To me, "Dark Places" matches up pretty favorably with "Gone Girl" (I actually liked this one even better as a book than I did "Gone Girl"). They both have a pretty respectable cast (even Chloe Moretz has a key role in this), they both feature a psychological thriller/mystery at the heart of the narrative, and both are thoroughly entertaining from beginning to end.

So, why did "Gone Girl" soar while "Dark Places" puttered out? There seemed to be very little advertising for "Dark Places", it premiered in very few theaters, and came to home video right away. There is also a sense (while watching the film) that the production value isn't quite as good as maybe it could be. Not overly detrimentally to the experience, by any means, but also not quite as polished as "Gone Girl". It felt a little bit cobbled together and stunted when it could have been just as great and nuanced as its Flynn-inspired predecessor.

Overall, though, "Dark Places" is a pretty solid movie that (for whatever reason) gained such a bad reputation that it flopped early and often. If you enjoyed the book, though, I think you will like this one just as much. Don't be scared away by a few bad reviews and some terrible score markings on other websites...it isn't nearly that bad!! Had some of the kinks been worked out of it, it could have been a lot more well-received.

Not a believable plot

[weissedel · 6/10 · 6 July 2022]

Good enough acting. What I couldn't get past was the plot. Not even good acting could suspend belief in this film. Characters behaved in ways that just don't ring true. At all.

Really good, but fizzles out at the end.

[miinty · 6/10 · 13 May 2020]

I was gripped watching this movie. The story, the way it unfolded was, well, it had me hooked. I cared what happened... I was curious what happened, but when I saw what happened, it was like, "....... oh."

That conclusion (for me) did not match the rest of the movie. To me, if they wanted to go 'that way' for the ending, then to me, the backstory and backstory confusion, and Ben's story, and basically all the other Ben stuff needed wayyyyy more time. (I know it's based in a book, I wonder of all that backstory stuff gets more attention in the book... I'm about to find out.)

I gave it a 6 instead of a 2 because I really did like everything except the final reveal. Had it not been for a likable cast, that ending would've really sunk the movie for me.

I'd recommend it with the footnote: You won't be satisfied.

"The truly frightening flaw in humanity is our capacity for cruelty - we all have it."

[Bored_Dragon · 6/10 · 8 June 2019]

Libby, as an eight-year-old, survived the massacre of her family. A few decades later, an association of amateurs investigating famous murders, "The Kill Club", is asking her to help them resolve that old case. She reluctantly accepts and the mystery begins to unwind, revealing unexpected truths.

"Dark Places" is a film that is drowning in mediocrity. It is not written badly, but there is nothing to praise either. The acting is not bad, but nobody's performance will leave you breathless. I was not bored, but if I skipped it, I would not miss much. I do not recommend it, not because it is bad, but because there are a million better things you could watch instead.

6/10

Confusing

[dpothul · 5/10 · 14 September 2020]

This movie jumps back-and-forth from one. to another. Which is kind of confusing because it happens so frequently. There's also an unexplained occurrence that makes no sense. So this is a spoiler.

The guy that she hired to kill her, took a shot gun and killed one of the daughters. Why? He wasn't supposed to kill the whole family, just the mother. Correct?

American crime noir

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 28 April 2018]

DARK PLACES is a slow-paced and realistic slice of American crime with a slightly muddled storyline. The narrative is split between two time frames, the present day and the historical past, but the present day plotting is rather weak and limited despite the presence of established stars including Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult in the cast. The historical story is much more interesting and involves the build-up to a family massacre which has an eventual reveal that you certainly won't see coming. The film utilises the real-life Satanism scare of the 1990s to good effect and keeps you watching in order to find out the answers, although it's not a movie that you'll come back to once you've found out what really did happen.

This is no Gone Girl

[eddie_baggins · 4/10 · 3 November 2015]

Last year David Fincher delivered a pinpoint accurate adaptation of Gillian Flynn's bestselling book Gone Girl, a thriller that was both well designed, well-acted and perfectly constructed in its adapting of Flynn's source writing and was a break out hit the world over. Gone Girl as a film then is everything that Dark Places isn't.

Studios were undoubtedly clambering to secure rights to Flynn's books once they found themselves on bestselling lists and after the success of Gone Girl at the cinema and on face value Dark Places seems like another sure fire hit. There's dark tones everywhere you look from the Satanism themes, the struggling family murdered in cold blood, a kill club that get their kicks from solving crimes and front and centre Charlize Theron's Libby Day, the grown up survivor of the family murder that gives a testimony that imprisoned her older brother for the crime but in a convoluted story that seemingly worked quite well in book format gets lost in a shoddily edited and unveiling cinematic narrative.

Much of the films failings can be placed squarely at the feet of director Paquet-Brenner who unlike Fincher seems to lack any single amount of vision for this event. Proceedings meander along but there's never an energy to this tale, revelations come and go yet you're left anticipating the film kicking into another gear only to find by the time the credits role it never once threatened to breakout. Much of the film fails unequivocally and is saved only by a decent Theron turn as the feisty Libby and some nice support from Tye Sheridan as the young Ben Day and Corey Stoll as the older incarnation. Other performers in the piece get lost in a mistreated retelling of the source material with yet another OTT turn from Chloe Grace Moretz front and centre in this aspect.

Uninvolving, lacking any energy and most tellingly just downright boring, Dark Places barely feels like it belongs in the league of cinematic thrillers and in the end comes off as a cheap and nasty TV movie that is notched up a peg on the ratings scale thanks to some Hollywood talent that deserve better material to work with.

2 sacrificial cows out of 5

Dark Places indeed

[evondorster · 8/10 · 31 March 2015]

What do you expect from a story with a title like that? You do indeed find them in this earnest and thoughtful movie. A fifteen-year-old boy accused of pedophilia and Satan worship who gets his girlfriend pregnant and is then accused of murdering his mother and two sisters by his third sister - how much darker can you get without it seeming too contrived?

As with Flynn's other tale brought to the cinema, Gone Girl, there is a mystery at the heart of the story that leads to a surprise ending that has been carefully built up but is nonetheless completely unexpected. A constellation of great character actors helps populate this dreary landscape of poverty and despair. And it does end with a note of resolution and hope. The truth shall set you free.

The plot revolves around an event that takes place in 1985 and an investigation thirty years later that seeks justice for the boy sent to jail for killing three family members. Fans of the book should be pleased with the faithful and sensitive adaptation.

I went last night to the world premiere in Paris. Charlize Theron was there, thanking the French people for understanding her attraction to dark places. Her brilliant performance may not get her another Oscar - the film itself is not the sort of story that many will find entertaining - but she has again created a memorable character who suffers and is redeemed.

Disturbing, dark and complex

[msunando · 6/10 · 15 May 2020]

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.

I'll have to see if the problem was in source material...

[paper-pagan · 4/10 · 1 August 2015]

*Spoilers* The ending made no sense. Either this is because it was done poorly by the director or the book isn't very good either. I'll get my hands on it and read it. How did it make more sense for the woman to invite a murderer in her home where her children slept to kill her as opposed to selling the farm and moving to her (inviting) sister until she gets a job that isn't a total loss. Because she liked the farm so much? How are her four per-pubescent kids with a creep father supposed to benefit from that?

The directing was actually really bad. Charlize Theron was oddly cast and nobody else seemed to make any sense either - a lot of really good actors just showed up to do some weird scenes and the were gone. Theron wonders from one scene to the next like she is hoping this will be over soon and she gets paid. The kids had most of the story and the boy who plays the brother is the only one that stands out. For some reason i really don't like Chloe G. Moretz, she always plays such unpleasant people. Great actress, just ... Creepy. Of course they chose her adult version well - all the women in this movie stand by their 'white trash once, white trash for ever', and it's even worse if they had rich mommy and daddy.

The one thing I liked somewhat were the costumes. (Not so much the make-up, because in one scene Theron's 'trailer trash tanned' face totally mismatches her chalk white hands, and the MUA seemed to only know how to apply eyeliner and not much else to make women seem trashy.) Although it feels like this takes course over three weeks and not one day and the lead COULD change her styling at least once, she is wonderfully locked in her own mental prison, as her brother points out - she cannot think outside herself at all. Her family is said to be incredibly poor, but I always imagined poor people to be, dunno, less neat and not quite so perfect. The hair of several actors has more character and message than their faces and clothes.

What went wrong?

A messed up situation that created some messed up people

[ihanson7 · 7/10 · 27 February 2017]

A very appropriate title for a messed up situation that created some messed up people. I am biased with Charlize, but this was well done and an entertaining yet twisted tale. If you are a fan of her work you won't be disappointed. The rest of the cast was enjoyable also. I hear the book was good too.