Review: Dark Places

With the popularity of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl and David Fincher's near perfect film adaptation, it only seemed like a matter of time before we got more adult thrillers and would see Flynn's other novels made into films. The first is helmed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner who did Sarah's Key a fews back.

Dark Places stars Charlize Theron as Libby, a woman who escaped a mass murder of her family as a child only to testify that her brother was the murderer. In the present day she is approached by a Kill Club, lead by Nicholas Hoult. This group investigates cases where the wrong person may have been committed and they strongly believe Libby's brother is innocent of murdering their family.

The film cuts back often to right before the murders, telling the story of Patty Day and her kids. Patty is played by Christina Hendricks. We learn that Ben, the brother, had ties to devil worship and a young, reckless girl played by Chloe Moretz. This adds a whole slew of twists and turns and Libby discovers what really happened that night.
Dark Places feels oddly uncinematic most of the time. The camerawork in particular feels television-like, favoring in camera zooms at awkward times. The acting is all over the place with Theron and Hault fairing the best. The voice-over simply does not work here as it did in Gone Girl, partly because it tells the plot rather than provide insight into the characters.

The pulpy plot of a Kill Club is played with an overly serious tone for something that comes off as silly. Being a key element of the plot, it takes a bit to swallow. When the film focuses on the procedure, it is at its best. However, the director here gets more interested in melodrama than the process, unlike David Fincher's approach that fascinated. It is hard not to be more impressed with Fincher's work in Gone Girl after seeing how clunky Flynn's favored structure and use of voice-over narration can play.

2/5