“Dark Places” isn’t as well made as last year’s Gillian Flynn movie adaptation “Gone Girl” but with an outstanding performance from producer/actress Charlize Theron and a noir look at the Midwest, this is the kind of who-done-it to keep audiences guessing.
This movie is part Lifetime made for TV movie, “Dateline,” “To Catch a Predator” and “Law and Order” episode with enough plot twists to make it comparable to an Agatha Christie mystery.
Theron gives a great performance as Libby Day, a woman who has made a career out of being the youngest survivor of the Kansas Prairie Massacre that left her mother and two sisters dead. At age eight testifies that her older brother killed them but as an adult she must come to terms with what actually happened that night. The character’s facial expressions and body language convey a great deal, even if she doesn’t have many lines.
The Midwest is presented as overly gritty, where everyone has something to hide and more than a few skeletons in the closet. Theron wears the same ripped white t-shirt and trucker hat for much of the movie and one character lives in a toxic waste dump. There is the losing the farm subplot and the troubled teen who doesn’t fit in.
“It’s all rather sick, and fun to watch in a twisted fort of way,” as the AV Club wrote in their review. This movie is comparable to a B-movie or true crime tale while at the same time hinting at social and philological themes including poverty, moral panics created by the media and forgiveness.
Rotten Tomatoes rated the movie a disappointing 28 percent, calling it “dingy and dumb,” according to critic Joe Neumaier of the New York Daily News. The movie was stuck in production until “Gone Girl” was released, according to IMDB.com, but although this movie is not receiving the same praise it is worth the wait.
“Dark Places” is not “Gone Girl” but for fans who liked Theron in “Mad Max: Furry Road” or Flynn’s thrill educing writing, “Dark Places” is worth watching, or there’s always “Fantastic Four,” another all too predictable super hero movie.
