Dark Places - Gilles Paquet-Brenner - 2015

★★★ - Picked this movie at random from the crime section of HBO Max. Forgot that I read the novel it was based on a decade or so ago. Written by Gillian Flynn, liked it less than Gone Girl and Sharp Objects (still need to read The Grownup; she has some talent, this Flynn, and I'll keep reading as she keeps writing), but still liked alright. Early on, I kept thinking it seemed familiar, realizing maybe 20 minutes in that I read it and hated the ending. Similarly, thought it was good enough to finish but needed to be better to be remembered. I'm sure I'll forget I watched this in six months. 

Gist is one Libby Day is forced to confront childhood trauma. When she was eight, her mother and two sisters were brutally murdered in their rural Kansas farmhouse. Now, 30 years later, broke, she is contacted by a group of true crime enthusiasts. Sort of the type that tries to solve old cold cases and work to bring justice to cases they feel got it wrong. Such is the circumstance with her family's murder. They believe her brother, who was convicted of the crime, is innocent. Desperate for cash, she reluctantly agrees to open the dark door of her painful past, uncovering truths about the tragic night she was unwilling to contemplate. 

In addition to themes of trauma and violence, the movie touches on issues of rural American poverty, and the 1980s Satanic panic. Director Gilles Paquet-Brenner does a good job of packing it all in. He has made a career of taking dark novels to the screen with a style that is recognizably his. What he did with the Agatha Christie mystery Crooked House, which is crazy dark, and a French movie I saw 20 years ago called Pretty Things. Pretty Things was pretty fucked. Starred Marion Cotillard from Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. It's been forgotten though I remember it fondly. 

The movie stars Charlize Theron as Libby, the lovely Christina Hendricks as the murdered mother, and Nicholas Hoult (Beast in the newer X-Men movies) as the true crime obsessive. Cast also includes Chloë Grace Moretz (the little badass girl in Kick-Ass), Corey Stoll (the bald guy from Ant-Man), and Tye Sheridan (he played Scott Summers X-Men reboots as well and was the lead in Ready Player One and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse). Stoll and Sheridan play the Ben Day part. Stoll as the older version. Sheridan as the teenaged one. 

The approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes is an abysmal 23%, firmly putting it in rotten territory. I didn't think it was that bad, though. The consensus calls it “a mediocre thriller that gets tripped up on its own twists,” which is pretty fair. However, I thought Theron was stellar, and her character was complex and interesting. While she plays the part of a victim, she doesn't fall into the tropes. 

Overall, I'd call it average. I am a sucker for the people-going-from-place-to-place-to-solve-a-mystery format, as run-of-the-mill as that is. Where the film falls apart is the ending, which feels rushed and too convenient. Gets tripped up in its own bullshit, which is what I thought of the book's conclusion, too.