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Gillian Flynn ’s script for David Fincher ’s incredible adaptation of “ Gone Girl ” was a master class in genre, taking an admittedly ridiculous, twisting and turning narrative and making its plot holes forgivable through sheer force of entertainment value. It makes sense that another of Flynn’s novels, the sinister “Dark Places,” would get the cinematic treatment as well, although this failed exercise could be used comparatively with “Gone Girl” as a What Not to Do cinematic lesson. Whereas Fincher and Flynn brought style and flair to the saga of Amazing Amy, writer/director Gilles Paquet-Brenner presents a drab, dull, uninspired affair, enlivened only slightly by the talented cast assembled. Failing to find a visual language for the piece that reaches beyond a Lifetime TV Movie and adapting the material in such a way that makes her protagonist largely inactive in her own story, Paquet-Brenner only makes the already-underrated “Gone Girl” look even more accomplished.

When she was only seven, Libby Day ( Sterling Jerins ) suffered the unimaginable. Her entire family was murdered in a shotgun rampage like something out of “ In Cold Blood .” In fact, the murders earned that kind of international attention, especially after Libby’s brother Ben ( Tye Sheridan ) was arrested and sentenced for them. Accused of dabbling in Satanism, Ben was convicted on little evidence, and true crime nuts have been convinced for years that there was more to the Day murders. Of course, there was, because, well, there’s no movie otherwise.

Bitter and hardened by life, grown Libby ( Charlize Theron ) hasn’t been in touch with her incarcerated brother (played by Corey Stoll older) since the crimes. That’s when she’s contacted by Lyle Wirth ( Nicholas Hoult ), a member of a true crime club that collects items and information from bloodbaths around the country. He convinces the broke Libby to tell her story to the club, and she needs the cash enough to do so. Of course, Lyle has ulterior motives, convinced that Ben is innocent, and he eventually talks Libby into digging deeper into what really happened that night.

Both narratives—the current-day investigation and the days leading up to the murder years earlier—are intercut in this murky, unrefined screenplay that piles up narrative and twists without ever considering the piece’s deadly lack of characters. Theron does her brooding best to make Libby three-dimensional, but, and this could be partly the fault of the source material, she is almost always merely a listener to someone presenting more details about her past or entirely absent in the extensive flashbacks. Consequently, “Dark Places” is a film without a protagonist, akin to watching recreated footage on “Dateline NBC,” as each flashback or revelatory conversation fills in a few more details of the overheated story without giving us a reason to care about it in the first place. Poor Theron wanders through a narrative designed around reveals; so she’s either remembering things she couldn’t have possibly known about or hearing about things she should have figured out a long time ago. As he often has lately, Corey Stoll actually makes out the best in a few crucial scenes as the older Ben, and Hoult certainly isn’t bad even if his character, like so many of them, feels like a plot device.

All of this leads to a distinct lack of urgency in “Dark Places,” which makes the dour, depressing subject matter that much harder to enjoy. It's a checklist of awful things that can happen to a Middle American family. The Day matriarch ( Christina Hendricks ) is afraid of losing the farm, their dad (a suspect in the murders) is missing, Satanism threatens to entice young Ben, the kid is accused of child abuse, drugs, teenage pregnancy—the whole thing verges on poverty porn given the lack of genre escapism provided. We needed a reason to wallow in the dark places of Libby Day’s horrible life to make the cinematic journey worthwhile. No one involved in the production of “Dark Places” ever asked a crucial question: Why should we care?

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Dark Places (2015)

Rated R for some disturbing violence, language, drug use and sexual content

113 minutes

Charlize Theron as Libby Day

Chloë Grace Moretz as Diondra

Nicholas Hoult as Lyle

Christina Hendricks as Patty Day

Andrea Roth as Old Diondra

Corey Stoll as Ben Day

Tye Sheridan as Young Ben Day

Sterling Jerins as Young Libby Day

Shannon Kook-Chun as Young Trey

Drea de Matteo as Krissi Cates

Gilles Paquet-Brenner
Gillian Flynn
Douglas Crise

Director of Photography

Barry Ackroyd

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Dark Places Reviews

The material plays like a common potboiler mystery with predictable twists and turns. That such weighty subject matter has been reduced to such banality is a tale of true crime itself.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | May 29, 2022

There is quite a bit to Dark Places that appears very marketable, at least on the surface.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jul 4, 2020

'Dark Places' is a complete waste of time that wastes Theron, Moretz and the rest of the cast to give us a lazy thriller. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Apr 15, 2020

Dark Places rarely rises above the level of tepid episode of "Cold Case."

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jul 16, 2019

The possibility of fast-tracking another of Gillian Flynn's intricately plotted thrillers from page to screen must have seemed like a fantastic idea... To call the final product a botch job would be a considerable kindness; it's just plain awful.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Apr 8, 2019

[An] apathetic film with no fire in its belly.

Full Review | Original Score: 5.5/10 | Aug 30, 2018

All this leaves us with Charlize Theron, an unquestionably talented actress who has somehow failed to find her rightful place.

Full Review | Jan 11, 2018

... what is exposed is revealing, but the form does not end up being conclusive. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 13, 2017

Well over half of the twists don't work and will either leave you groaning or laughing

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 3, 2017

Dark Places aims for the same kind of shocking twists and reveals as Gone Girl, but falls woefully short.

Full Review | Oct 17, 2017

It's simply an exercise in a kind of grimness that Quebecoise directors seem to enjoy (cf. Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners). But if that's your idea of a good time, you're advised to stick with the novel.

Full Review | Oct 11, 2017

It is Theron and Nicholas Hoult, and supporting cast members like Chloe Grace Moretz and Christina Hendricks, who make this worth exploring.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 20, 2017

Dark Places has all the building blocks of a good feature-and then forces everyone in it to motormouth through heavy-handed dialogue, trying to cram a fairly complex novel into an uninspired two-hour crime drama.

Full Review | Aug 22, 2017

Workmanlike, lean and diverting but ultimately lacking in key things a strong sense of place and a true feeling of darkness. Which is a bit of a blow, given the title.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 2, 2017

Dark Places has suggestions of a moody true-crime drama ... But languid pacing, poor directorial choices and a series of narrative dead ends make watching it a tiresome chore.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 6, 2016

Wishy-washy and all-round characterless, Dark Places is neither as dark nor as daring as its synopsis, title and everything else about it suggests. In fact, it's disappointingly vanilla and a film better left off for a small-screen viewing.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 5, 2016

Based on another page-turner by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, mystery thriller Dark Places can't match its predecessor for throat-grabbing suspense.

Full Review | Mar 8, 2016

The film races through the endless flashbacks and clichd material and winds up feeling a bit of a potboiler.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 25, 2016

Paquet-Brenner invests the split-time action with some brooding menace and the cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, does his best to lend some urgency, even as things spiral from suspense into outright silliness.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 24, 2016

The film, overall, is fatally uncertain of its identity - never quite certain whether it's a gruesome murder-mystery out to shock us or a heavy, character-based drama about a family torn apart.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 22, 2016

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Film Review: ‘Dark Places’

Another sinister mystery from the imagination of 'Gone Girl' novelist Gillian Flynn, this Kansas-set potboiler would benefit from a few good twists.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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No matter how you feel about “ Gone Girl ,” there’s no denying that Gillian Flynn ’s second bigscreen adaptation is a relative disappointment. While the raw ingredients — thick with serial killings, satanic cults, true-crime obsessives and twisted family secrets — certainly make “ Dark Places ” deserving of its title, the mystery itself can’t hold a candle to the much higher-profile David Fincher pic that sparked the town’s wave of Flynn-terest (though rights were sold as far back as 2010, the greenlight waited till “Girl” went). On the bright side, with Charlize Theron as its damaged-goods heroine, this more routine Kansas-set chiller should still rake in some decent cash for the U.S. distrib duo of A24 and DirecTV, which still haven’t dated the release.

Despite whatever forces have delayed “Dark Places” on the domestic front, where such “gritty” R-rated offerings once earned between $60 million and $120 million starring the likes of Ashley Judd rather than Oscar winners, several international territories are forging ahead with their release plans. First out of the gate is France, the home turf of helmer Gilles Paquet-Brenner, who directed Kristin Scott Thomas in “Sarah’s Key,” and who boarded the new project amid the excitement of another femme-driven split-time-periods puzzler. Genre qualifications nothwithstanding, Paquet-Brenner seems an unusual choice to tackle this uniquely Midwestern story, given the novel’s corn-country brand of paranoia — a regionally specific, God-fearing sensibility found in the country’s more conservative areas, best exemplified by the “Paradise Lost” documentary series.

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Though she didn’t exactly see the murders, young Libby Day (Sterling Jerins) is easily manipulated by lawyers and press into testifying against her brooding older brother, Ben (Tye Sheridan), a fringy goth kid who’s gotten mixed up in some weird stuff, like pot smoking and devil worship. In 1985, a town like Kinnakee simply isn’t equipped for such threatening behavior (alarmist news reports remind the sort of hysteria sweeping the nation at the time), and Ben finds himself the target of a modern-day witch hunt that lands him on death row and leaves Libby all but orphaned.

Nearly three decades later, when most of the film takes place, Libby (now played by Theron) has milked her survivor’s tale for nearly all it’s worth, surviving off donations from sympathetic strangers and the ever-dwindling royalties of her ghost-written memoir, “A Brand New Day” (another one of those touches, like the Amazing Amy phenom, that Flynn includes as a cynical dig at the publishing world). Normally, she wants nothing to do with the freaks hung up on the so-called “Kansas Prairie Massacre,” but running low on funds, she agrees to meet Lyle (Nicholas Hoult, channeling Anthony Perkins’ weirdo “Psycho” energy), who invites her to the annual Kill Club meeting, where creeps obsessed with unsolved (or incorrectly solved) mysteries convene to re-enact the crimes.

Just imagine what David Fincher could do with a setup like that. By contrast, Paquet-Brenner plays it surprisingly tame, as the cash-strapped Libby allows herself to be talked into reopening the most traumatic event of her youth in order to consider the possible innocence of her brother, unlocking a full-blown flood of flashbacks, which had only been teased as dreams before — most of them moments she couldn’t possibly have witnessed.

Ben’s boyish innocence has disappeared behind bars (his grown-up counterpart, Corey Stoll, looks nothing like Sheridan), though Libby never once doubted his guilt before. We can be sure that the explanation isn’t as simple as it first appears, and yet the screenplay (which Paquet-Brenner adapted himself, albeit with Flynn’s blessing) introduces its clues without any compelling red herrings to throw us off the trail, making the terribly implausible solution the only real possibility — at least as far as the film’s never-set-foot-in-Kansas logic is concerned (it was even shot in Louisiana).

While “Dark Places” doesn’t seem to understand the essential nature of its own Midwestern setting (whose desolation leads idle teens to act out and hard-pressed farmers to despair), that’s not to say the film lacks in atmosphere. If anything, it manages to pull off the same trick as HBO’s “True Detective,” skewing away from realism and into some alternate, half-imagined realm of terror, where rural bogeymen and white-trash stereotypes are twisted into the stuff of nightmares, augmented with shadowy lensing, a limited color range and eerie mood music.

Fleshing out the pic’s gallery of ghoulish supporting characters, there’s an old classmate-turned-stripper (Drea de Matteo) who paints a vivid picture of child molestation; Ben’s seriously disturbed, manipulative and possibly pregnant girlfriend, Diondra (Chloe Grace Moretz); and Libby’s deadbeat dad, Runner (Sean Bridgers), who lives in a toxic waste dump outside town.

Norman Rockwell would have an aneurysm if confronted with small-town folks like these, who would be more at home in the world of David Lynch, though he did audiences the courtesy of presenting a white-picket facade before revealing the true depravity behind it in “Blue Velvet.” In “Dark Places,” cynicism has choked out even the surface illusions: Libby got a crash course in evil at a very young age, and judging by the jaded expression Theron wears throughout the film, there’s no coming back from such disillusionment. That look seems as much a part of Libby’s wardrobe as the tattered trucker hat and worn-out white T-shirt.

As heroines go, it’s refreshing to get one as complex as this: When psychologically scarred female characters do turn up in thrillers, they’re usually little more than shivering victims who set a group of male cops in motion, but here, Libby does her own detective work, while Hendricks lends star power to the flashback scenes. Society assumes that there must have been a single male killer, but the explanation defies such conventional thinking (even if it replaces it with a ludicrous alternative). And when Libby’s investigation eventually leads to its disappointing end, there’s no man waiting on the sidelines to rescue her — all intriguing new flavors in an otherwise bland potboiler.

Reviewed at Club Marbeuf, Paris, March 16, 2015. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 103 MIN.

Production: (France) A Mars Distribution (in France)/A24, DirecTV (in U.S.) release of an Exclusive Media presentation of a Denver, Delilah Films, Hugo Prods, Mandalay Pictures production. (International sales: WME Global, Los Angeles.) Produced by Stephane Marsil, Charlize Theron, A.J. Dix, Beth Kono, Matt Jackson, Azim Bolkiah, Matthew Rhodes, Cathy Schulman. Executive producers, Peter Safran, Ginger Sledge, Jillian Longnecker, Tobin Armbrust, Guy East, Nigel Sinclair, Alex Brenner, Matthias Ehrenberg, Jose Levy, Nicolas Veinberg, Jeff Rice, Toby Moores. Co-producers, Jennifer Berman, Jason Babiszewski, Gabby Canton.
Crew: Directed, written by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, based on the novel by Gillian Flynn. Camera (color/B&W), Barry Ackroyd; editors, Billy Fox, Douglas Crise; music, BT, Gregory Tripi; production designer, Laurence Bennett; art director, Daniel Turk; set decorator, Linda Lee Sutton; costume designer, April Napier; sound (Dolby Digital/Datasat), Steve Aaron; sound designer, Stephen Flick; supervising sound editors/re-recording mixers, Marti D. Humphrey, Christopher Jacobson; visual effects supervisor, Joseph DiValerio; visual effects, Dive; special effects coordinator, Jack Lynch; assistant director, Vincent Palmo Jr.; casting, Carmen Cuba.
With: Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Chloe Grace Moretz, Tye Sheridan, Sterling Jerins, Corey Stoll, Christina Hendricks, Drea de Matteo, Sean Bridgers, Andrea Roth. (English dialogue)

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‘dark places’: film review.

Charlize Theron plays the heroine of 'Gone Girl' author Gillian Flynn’s second novel

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

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A girl gone astray after the brutal murder of her family decides to reopen the case nearly three decades later in Dark Places , French director Gilles Paquet-Brenner ’s proficient if potboilerish adaptation of Gillian Flynn ’s bestseller – published three years before her megahit marriage thriller, Gone Girl .

Starring Charlize Theron as a trauma survivor compelled to revisit the demons of her childhood, and Nicholas Hoult as the self-made detective who guides her through various twists, red herrings and third act reveals, this plot-heavy suspense flick loses some of the book’s originality in translation while failing to channel its sense of Midwestern malaise. But it keeps the guessing game going long enough to compensate for some otherwise shallow characterizations, while Theron offers up an earnest and downbeat turn that says a lot with little dialogue – playing most of the movie behind a beat-up baseball cap that only partially conceals her killer good looks.

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Eye For Film >> Movies >> Dark Places (2015) Film Review

Dark places.

Reviewed by: Angus Wolfe Murray

Notoriety cuts the girl down and as a woman she is angry.

Sole survivor of a family massacre, after which her teenage brother is arrested and jailed for life, Libby Day knows that it was her evidence as an eight-year-old that condemned him. Now she wants to find out the truth of what really happened that night in the farmhouse when her sisters and mother were shot to death and she escaped by hiding in a barn.

It has been 28 years since the murders that captivated a nation. Libby wrote a book about it which became a best seller, resulting in celebrity of a macabre kind. Still people wonder why her brother never filed for an appeal. If he was innocent he would have done so, surely?

Libby is approached by a member of The Kill Club, a group of young enthusiastic miscarriage-of-justice amateur sleuths, and, contrary to her paranoid, reclusive nature, agrees to unlock the secrets of the past. Or, at least, try.

Writer/director Gilles Paquet-Brenner uses a sophisticated flashback technique to hint at what might have gone down, intercepting the story flow with snatched memories from that night. The horror element is less intrusive than the who of whodunit.

Ultimately the plot implodes. There are too many inconsistencies and credibility flaws. However, Charlize Theron as Libby is electrifying. Her repressed energy is like a ticking time bomb. In jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap she looks like a contender and performs with steely conviction. Simply watching her, as this woman who hates to be touched, is to feel the desolation of those dark places.

Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner

Writer: Gilles Paquet-Brenner, based on the novel by Gillian Flynn

Starring: Charlize Theron, Sterling Jerins, Nicholas Hoult, Christina Hendricks, Tye Sheridan, Corey Stoll, Chloë Grace Moretz, Andrea Roth, Sean Bridgers, Natalie Precht, Madison McGuire

Runtime: 113 minutes

Country: UK, France, US

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Dark Places (Movie Review)

Sophie's rating: ★ ½ director: gilles paquet-brenner | release date: 2015.

Frequently, when talking to people who don’t consider themselves to be horror fans, the conversation of horror vs. thriller comes up. These two styles share a lot in common from the arc of the narrative to the types of characters, to the very beats that propel the story forward. A thriller can be just as heart-pounding and enthralling as any horror movie—when done right. The problem is that as the thriller relies less on scares and creative kills, the mystery at the heart of the story, there is not a lot less room for error in the way the pieces of that story fit together and they way that it’s told.

Though certainly not a horror movie in any way, the 2014 adaptation of Gillian Flynn novel Gone Girl delivered a fantastically dark and atmospheric thrill ride from start to finish, due in large part to some stellar performances and the skillful hand of director David Fincher. Despite the fact that it was adapted from a book made up of two dueling narratives, one dependent entirely on diary entries of a missing woman, this book was able to be translated seamlessly for the screen and critics and fans alike went wild.

Clearly trying to capitalize on its success, the rights for another of Flynn’s novels, Dark Places , were snatched up and an equally star-studded cast was gathered. Starring Charlize Theron as the adult survivor of a massacre that killed her older sisters and mother when she was younger, the story slowly unwinds what really happened that day. Libby (Theron) begrudgingly joins a group of amateur sleuths (lead by Nicholas Hoult, who costarred with Theron in arguably one of the best films of 2015) who are desperate to exonerate her older brother who has been in jail for the murders for the last twenty plus years.

On its surface, this movie may have looked like it was destined for success, but it was anything but. The first serious failing seems to be in the adaptation itself. Rather than enlisting the author herself, the various production companies involved in the making of this movie hired a relatively unknown director in Giles Paquet-Brenner to write and direct the film. The film relied far too heavily on voiceover—namely having Libby vomit exposition in the form of her reading large block quotes of text from the book while non-action took place on screen. Apart from that, the directing itself was incredibly shoddy. The camera work looked like it would be better suited for a straight-to-TV movie and the inexplicable grainy, found-footage shots that were used to represent Libby’s flashbacks have no place in a movie coming out in 2015.

Along with Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult, this movie had Christina Hendricks, Chloe Grace-Moretz, Corey Stoll, and Tye Sheridan at its disposal and did not put out a movie that was in any way equal to the star power of a single one of them – let alone all of them combined. Several of the performances verge on overdrawn which seems linked to the poor translation of the source material to screen.

Dark Places had the story, but wasn't able to use it effectively. Coming from a book as engrossing as this one, with a story and narrative style that are intriguingly executed, this movie is a fantastic example of what cynical movie making can do. This is not a suitable thriller. Save yourself the trouble and just read the book.

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Dark places.

Directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner

In 1985, her entire family was murdered. 30 years later, the truth emerges.

A woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child is forced to confront the events of that day.

Charlize Theron Nicholas Hoult Chloë Grace Moretz Christina Hendricks Tye Sheridan Corey Stoll Andrea Roth Sterling Jerins Shannon Kook Drea de Matteo Sean Bridgers J. LaRose Jennifer Pierce Mathus Denise Williamson Natalie Precht Madison McGuire Addy Miller Jeff Chase Laura Cayouette Richard Gunn Glenn Morshower Lori Z. Cordova Michael Crabtree John F. Daniel Steve Shearer Dan Hewitt Owens Gillian Flynn Tyler Forrest Dora Madison Show All… Sheri Davis Sarah Eilts Cody Daniel Lawrence P. Beron

Director Director

Gilles Paquet-Brenner

Producers Producers

Azim Bolkiah A.J. Dix Matt Jackson Beth Kono Stéphane Marsil Matthew Rhodes Cathy Schulman Charlize Theron Joanne Podmore Rhian Williams

Writers Writers

Gilles Paquet-Brenner Julien David Rachel Parker

Original Writer Original Writer

Gillian Flynn

Casting Casting

Carmen Cuba

Editors Editors

Douglas Crise Billy Fox

Cinematography Cinematography

Barry Ackroyd

Assistant Directors Asst. Directors

Vincent Palmo Jr. Kathie Tull

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Wendy Rutland Cesar Canavati Tobin Armbrust Alexander Yves Brunner Matthias Ehrenberg Ricardo Kleinbaum José Levy Jillian Longnecker Jeff Rice Osvaldo Ríos Peter Safran Ginger Sledge Nicolas Veinberg Rob Weston

Production Design Production Design

Laurence Bennett

Art Direction Art Direction

Daniel Turk

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Linda Lee Sutton

Stunts Stunts

Gregg Brazzel Emily Brobst Chelsea Bruland Cheryl Wheeler Duncan

Composer Composer

Gregory Tripi

Costume Design Costume Design

April Napier

Makeup Makeup

Jacenda Burkett

Hairstyling Hairstyling

Lawrnell Bell-Rattler

Denver & Delilah Films Mandalay Vision Exclusive Media Hugo Productions Cuatro Plus Films Da Vinci Media Ventures Daryl Prince Productions

France UK USA

Releases by Date

31 mar 2015, 29 jul 2015, 30 jul 2015, 08 apr 2015, 29 apr 2015, 04 jun 2015, 10 jun 2015, 17 jun 2015, 18 jun 2015, 24 jun 2015, 25 jun 2015, 01 jul 2015, 08 jul 2015, 09 jul 2015, 15 jul 2015, 16 jul 2015, 05 aug 2015, 07 aug 2015, 12 aug 2015, 14 aug 2015, 27 aug 2015, 04 sep 2015, 14 sep 2015, 22 oct 2015, 10 dec 2015, 24 jun 2016, 20 nov 2022, releases by country.

Theatrical 16
Theatrical MA15+

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

Premiere Fantasia International Film Festival
Theatrical 14A
Theatrical 14
Premiere Paris
Theatrical 12
Theatrical IIB
Theatrical 15
Digital PG12
Theatrical B-15

Netherlands

Theatrical M/14

Russian Federation

Digital 16+
Theatrical NC16

South Korea

Theatrical 18
Premiere Traverse City Film Festival
Theatrical R

113 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

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Just leave Gillian Flynn stuff to Fincher, OK?

Review by selery ★½

stop casting chloe grace moretz as the edgy teenage girl it doesn't work it will never work

Review by Dan ★

Finished the book earlier and that was a 5 course meal... this movie is like the chicken nugget Louis Tomlinson threw out of a hotel window to fans... 1 star for Corey Stroll’s fine ass

Review by Bruno Youn ★ 8

Dark Places had everything to be another great film based on author Gillian Flynn’s novels, but it turns out to be a messy, bland and ludicrous story that would have been a complete failure if it wasn’t for Charlize Theron solid performance. Right from the start you notice a couple of similarities with Gone Girl like the first-person narration and the constant interplay between scenes from the past with the present day. However, those transitions are pretty blatant in Dark Places, the dialogue is laughable at times, most of the characters are not engaging at all and the final reveal has got to be one of the most nonsensical and shallow ones I’ve seen in a while. Charlize Theron gives her best efforts but her performance alone isn’t enough to make me recommend this mess of a movie.

Review by matt lynch ★★½

There's a scene in this where Chloe Moretz deflowers Tye Sheridan while her pet dobermans watch. So, pretty dark, I guess.

Review by áine ★★½

this is shot like an episode of the office

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★½ 7

There are bad films and there are bland films. Despite the contradiction, the former can be good, whereas the latter cannot be saved.

I knew this movie was bad before reading reviews, the trailers left much to be desired. It was also clear that this adaptation was a result of Flynn's great success in adapting her novel "Gone Girl". Unfortunately, the magic and skill of that film is conspicuously absent in this one. The subject of Satanism and the panic that occurred during the last decades of the last century can provide interesting stories, however this wasn't the case here. This story was not at all captivating, and it was sometimes thought to be too convoluted. Not to mention the…

Review by Erika ★

It took me eight attempts over the span of a year and a half just to get past the first twenty minutes of this film.

Review by claira curtis ½ 2

I finally read the book that Dark Places is based off of over the weekend so I decided it’d be worth revisiting again, a little over a year since my original watch.

What originally just felt like a lackluster crime thriller that I couldn’t quite pinpoint the true faults of is now one of my least favorite book to screen adaptations of all time.

Every single person in this movie is a major miscast. What I would deem as crucial and huge details and plot points are completely nonexistent.

The book Dark Places was a page turner that kept me on the edge of my seat even despite already knowing the inevitable outcome thanks to the movie. The movie Dark Places …

Review by jourdain searles ★★

That definitely was a movie. It had credits and everything.

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Dark Places

Libby Day was only eight years old when her family was brutally murdered in their rural Kansas farmhouse. Almost thirty years later, she reluctantly agrees to revisit the crime and uncovers the wrenching truths that led up to that tragic night.
Libby Day survived the massacre of her family in their farmhouse in the Kansas countryside when she was eight, and has been existing on donations and lectures ever since. 30 years ago, the police believed that a satanic cult was responsible for the murder of her mother and two sisters, and her brother Ben was convicted with her testimony in court. However, when acquaintance Lyle Wirth invites Libby to visit "The Kill Club", where amateurs investigate famous crimes, she finds that they believe Ben is innocent. Libby needs money, so she accepts to revisit the slaughter of her family, and she faces up to the painful revelations and the ultimate truth. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
As the sole survivor of the Kinnakee massacre back in 1985 which cost her entire family, Libby Day convinced that her brother Ben dabbles with the occult, names him as the deranged killer, sending him, consequently, in prison. Eventually, almost thirty years after the ghastly incident, Libby embittered and nearly broke, she will inevitably accept the offer of Lyle Wirth, a "True Crime Club" member, to share her side of the story at their annual meeting. However, Libby by digging deep into her traumatic past, she will begin to doubt her brother's guilt, furthermore, not only will she realise that the real murderer may still be on the loose but also that even though there can be more than one sides to a story, the truth has only one. — Nick Riganas
Libby Day (Theron) was only eight years old when her mother and two sisters were brutally murdered in their rural Kansas farmhouse. In court, she pointed the finger at her brother Ben (Sheridan), and her testimony put the troubled 16-year-old in prison for life. Twenty-five years later, Libby appears at a gathering of true-crime aficionados, led by Lyle Wirth (Hoult), and is shocked to learn most of them believe Ben is innocent and the real killer is still at large.
In 1985 in Kinnakee, Kansas, Libby Day is the sole survivor of the massacre of her mother and two sisters. Responding to the police's leading questions, she tells them that her brother Ben (Sheridan) committed the crime. In the present day, Libby (Theron) has made a living from donations sent by strangers to the little girl they saw on the news. With donations drying up, she is hard up for cash when she is approached by Lyle Wirth (Hoult) to make a personal appearance at his "True Crime" club. She agrees to go and answer questions about her past for $700. Back in 1985, Ben comes to the breakfast table with his hair dyed black. He has a tense relationship with his mother Patty (Hendricks) and his eldest sister Michelle, who taunts Ben about being a loner and rumors about him at school. Ben hangs out with a Satanist bookie named Trey Teepano. Meanwhile, their mother Patty is told that her farm is being foreclosed on, despite her best efforts to stay afloat. At Wirth's club, Libby learns that most of the members believe her brother Ben is innocent. His conviction was based on Libby's testimony. Still believing that Ben is guilty, Libby nevertheless agrees to work with the club in return for much needed money. Urged by Wirth to visit Ben in prison, Libby's curiosity about what motivated him to kill their family prods her to keep researching the case. Prior to the murders, Ben was planning to run away with his pregnant girlfriend Diondra (Moretz). Meanwhile, several young girls have accused Ben of molesting them. When Patty is informed of the charges, she visits the home of the chief accuser Krissi Cates, whose father is irate and looking to harm Ben. Patty is distraught by the accusations and feels that she has failed her kids. Back home, their father Runner (Bridgers) is waiting for Patty. He needs money to skip town because he owes Trey more than he can repay. He is violent and abusive towards Patty. He attempts to rip her heirloom ruby necklace off her neck but, unable to do so, he abuses her and steals money from her wallet. In the present, Libby tracks down Runner to an abandoned factory where he lives with other homeless addicts. He tells her about Diondra's pregnancy. Libby also locates Krissi Cates (Matteo), who eventually confesses that she made up the molestation accusations against Ben. Meanwhile in 1985, Patty is informed by a friend with the Farmers Home Administration that he might have a solution to her problems. She meets with a stranger in the middle of the night who says that he can help her. It later turns out that he is Calvin Diehl, a serial killer known as the Angel of Debt, who murders people so that they can collect on their life insurance policies. Patty goes home and hides some money for Diehl. At the same time, Diondra finds out about the accusations against Ben and convinces him to flee with her immediately. They go to Ben's house to steal some money. Michelle overhears them talking and threatens to tell on them. Diondra viciously attacks Michelle and starts to choke her. Diehl has also entered the house. In the hallway, he stabs Patty. When her middle daughter rushes out of the bedroom to get help for Michelle, Diehl grabs the family shotgun and kills the young girl. The shot distracts Ben from his effort to protect Michelle. While he goes to see what has happened, Diondra kills Michelle. In the present, Libby finds Diondra and the daughter she had with Ben. She finds her mother's ruby necklace in Diondra's bathroom and realizes she is in danger. Diondra's daughter attacks her, but she manages to escape the house. She finds out about Diehl's involvement from Wirth, whose club has been working on the Angel of Debt case. Libby visits Ben again in prison, and they apologize to each other. She realizes he was trying to protect his unborn daughter by taking the rap for the murder of his mother and his sisters. A news report confirms that Diondra has been arrested. Libby returns to look at the family farm where she grew up. Ben is exonerated and released from prison while Libby states that she doesn't intend to press charges against Diondra's daughter who has yet to be found as she understands her actions.

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Dark Places

The moment Gone Girl went from a much buzzed about beach read to an even more buzzed about motion picture, Gillian Flynn’s stock rose exponentially in Hollywood. So naturally, the rights were snatched up to all three of her debut novels, and with Gone Girl ’s success, you’d think marketing a project based on her work would be easy as pie. Unfortunately, Dark Places doesn’t have the marketing muscle that its high-profile sibling had to its name. This is a damned shame, as Dark Places is, surprisingly, a more thrilling mystery tale than Gone Girl before it.

Thirty years ago, Libby Day ( Charlize Theron ) barely escaped the brutal killing of her mother ( Christina Hendricks ) and two sisters. Everyone, even Libby herself, labeled the culprit as her brother, Ben ( Corey Stoll ); but a group of crime-solving hobbyists think otherwise. Drawn in by the lure of the truth, as well as the money she so desperately needs, Libby is drawn back to those dark places she’s suppressed for so long. With time running out before her brother’s case goes cold, she’ll have to dive into her family’s uncomfortable past to find the answers she seeks.

How Dark Places got buried in VOD and sporadic theatrical release, I’ll never know. What I do know is that writer/director Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel of the same name is a film that could have made a splash with a wider release in the August doldrums. The central mystery behind Dark Places ’ conflict jumps between 1985 and today, giving us just enough information from the past before bringing us back to the present each time it flashes back. All the while, Paquet-Brenner’s film tells an engrossing story that draws the viewer in to an extent that they only realize after the film is finished that they basically watched an extended episode of any detective procedural.

What separates Dark Places from a run-of-the-mill procedural is the fact that its investigator is also one of its most affected victims, which gives Charlize Theron a lot of room to create a character we can pity but also despise. Libby starts off investigating her family’s past strictly for the money, coming off of a decades-long streak of trading on the tragedy that befell her as a child. Yet as she dives deeper into the mystery of her family, we see Theron’s character softening with each puzzle piece she snaps into place. By time the film ends, she’s as scared as we are that she won’t make it out alive, and it makes for a harrowing final act.

Supporting Charlize Theron is a colorful cast of characters that show just how Libby Day came to be so damaged by life, the most important one being her brother, Ben. While we don’t get to see too much of Corey Stoll in the role, as the film shows us more of the younger incarnation (played by Tye Sheridan ), both actors inhabit the role in a way that makes their limited time on screen worth watching. While the ensemble surrounding Theron’s protagonist is equally as important to the film’s success as she is, there’s no mistake that this is Theron’s show.

The only real drawback to the way Dark Places tells its story is that it seeds the eventual resolution to the mystery in a way that you’ve pretty much figured it out before the third act reveal. There are a couple of elements you might still be puzzling out as it all plays out on the screen, but it’s almost assured that you’ll figure out two thirds of the mystery’s solution. Still, the film is populated with a story so tense that you’ll find yourself getting wrapped up in the moment more than the big picture. Lots of mystery pictures tend to wrap themselves up in the actual mystery itself, without paying much mind the characters that are puzzling them out. Dark Places almost inverts that formula, but to an extent that it still works as a stellar example of what a film full of sleuthing can do.

With an engrossing story, and characters worth spending time getting to know better, Dark Places should have been A24’s sleeper summer hit. Instead, it’s a film that will probably be seen by fewer people than those choosing to see Fantastic Four . That doesn’t mean you have to make the same mistake. If you’re looking for something to help you ease your way out of summer tentpole season and into the more prestige heavy slate of the fall box office, then you should seek out Dark Places any way you can.

Mike Reyes is the Senior Movie Contributor at CinemaBlend, though that title’s more of a guideline really. Passionate about entertainment since grade school, the movies have always held a special place in his life, which explains his current occupation. Mike graduated from Drew University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, but swore off of running for public office a long time ago. Mike's expertise ranges from James Bond to everything Alita, making for a brilliantly eclectic resume. He fights for the user.

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Dark Places Is Dark, But Doesn’t Go Anyplace

“I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ” are the opening words of narration in Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s Dark Places , adapted from Gillian ( Gone Girl ) Flynn’s novel. Spoken by Charlize Theron, playing Libby Day, who as a child survived the gruesome murder of most of her family, the words have bite; Theron, as she proved yet again earlier this year in Mad Max: Fury Road , has a natural, irresistible intensity. You believe that she could beat you, then cut you, then spit on you for good measure … and then somehow make you beg for more.

The story unfolds in two timelines. In one, grown-up Libby, having once made her name as “the little orphan girl of the Kansas Prairie Massacre,” is approached by true-crime aficionado Lyle Wirth (Theron’s Fury Road co-star Nicholas Hoult) to talk to his “Kill Club,” a gathering of mystery fiends, and help them reopen the old murder case. They want to exonerate Libby’s brother Ben (played by Tye Sheridan as a teen, and Corey Stoll as an adult), whose imprisonment 28 years ago they believe was “the grossest miscarriage of justice ever.” Libby was 8 back then, but her testimony helped put her beloved brother behind bars, so she’s understandably skeptical about aiding these nerds. But she needs money, and the Kill Club’s paying, so she agrees to help them look into the case.

In the other timeline, we get glimpses of the various events spinning around the Day family right before the murders, back in 1985: Their farm is buckling under debt, and single mother Patty ( Mad Men ’s Christina Hendricks) is concerned over what will happen to her four kids. Young Ben, meanwhile, is engaging in a healthy bit of teenage Satanism, partly under the influence of his rich, nutty girlfriend Diondra (Chloë Grace Moretz). Did Ben, obsessed with Satan, chop his family up, as alleged? Or was it their estranged, drunken father? Or was it a shady local debt collector? Or someone else?

I haven’t read Flynn’s novel, so I don’t know for sure how closely the film sticks to the original. Much of Libby’s narration feels like Flynn’s voice, though — lyrical, reflective, and cruel — and it adds a touch of poetry to the otherwise by-the-numbers proceedings. There’s nothing particularly wrong with Dark Places : It’s cleanly directed, occasionally atmospheric, and mostly well acted. (Hendricks, in particular, is a standout as the doomed mother, her melancholy helping bathe the flashback scenes in a generalized desperation and grief.) But the film is also curiously lifeless, crammed tightly as it is with plot and structure — which becomes increasingly tedious as it hurtles toward its convoluted and somewhat ridiculous conclusion.

We don’t ever really get to know the Day kids, aside from young Ben. Even Libby, even though she’s the central character of the story, remains a bit of an enigma: In the present day, she’s often a witness, or a listener, reacting to others; in the flashbacks, she’s often a nonentity. We can imagine these characters having some room to breathe on the page and at the expansive length of a novel. But here they barely register. One of the more interesting parts of the story — Lyle and his Kill Club — help set events in motion and then pop up a couple of times, but mostly fade into the background as Libby strikes out on her own. Part of the problem is the interlaced, twin-timeline structure, which ends up diluting the emotional impact of both story threads, instead of enhancing or commenting on them. As a result, the mystery itself eventually becomes tiresome and shrug-worthy, even as the film breathlessly racks up the revelations. In the end, this twisty thriller just winds up twisting in the wind.

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Review: ‘Dark Places,’ based on Gillian Flynn’s novel, lacks ‘Gone Girl’s’ suspense

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“Dark Places” is an adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s pleasurably twisted novel published before “Gone Girl,” yet it feels like something rushed and imitative of the writer’s blackly comic sensibility.

Charlize Theron plays a cynical wreck named Libby Day, who at 7 survived the brutal massacre of her sisters and mother (in flashbacks, Christina Hendricks). For 30 years she has coasted on the dwindling financial goodwill of strangers.

When true-crime fanatics called the Kill Club (led by Nicholas Hoult) enlists her to exonerate Libby’s brother Ben, convicted as a teen (and played by Corey Stoll in the present-day prison scenes), she begins doubting her long-held version of that night. It’s a premise that proved catnip for Flynn’s brand of not-what-it-seems plotting, interior monologue and jabs at our murder-mad media world.

But in writer-director Gilles Paquet-Brenner’s hands, it’s a convoluted, airless procedural that generates practically no suspense and little that’s thematically resonant about lost souls and poisoned memories. It plays instead like the movie edit of a miniseries, grasping for coherence, with exposition-spitting actors relegated to surface venality, machine-like momentum and flashbacks that in some cases — involving young Ben and an edgy girlfriend (Chloe Grace Moretz) — aren’t flashbacks given that Libby couldn’t have seen them.

Theron is allowed a few charged moments, but on the whole “Dark Places” is strictly low-wattage.

-------------------

“Dark Places.”

MPAA rating: R for disturbing violence, language, drug use, sexual content.

Running time : 1 hour, 53 minutes.

Playing: ArcLight Hollywood; MGN Five Star, Glendale; Laemmle’s Playhouse 7, Pasadena. Also on VOD.

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Dark Places (2015) Movie Review: “Home Is Where The Lies Are..”

Dark Places (2015) Movie Review: I still remember how “Gone Girl” began . The very first background score to chasing Amy. Everything just made sense. I recently saw “ Dark Places” on Netflix. The first few things that come to my mind while I sit down to write about it would be – A pixie-haired Charlize Theron in a green-colored cap & leather jacket and a brilliant background score that wasn’t used judiciously. When it should be about how interesting and ballistic the plot was.

“Dark Places” is the second movie adaptation of a novel by Gillian Flynn. The first one was obviously the brilliant “Gone Girl” by David Fincher . Gilles Paquet-Brenner is no David Fincher . It’s made evident from the very first shot and goes on being the same until the last one. The biggest mistake a director could make with a cast and source material like that would be dumbing it down to a bland, unengaging murder mystery that looks like an episode of a show that has got its ratings all messed up.

Similar to Dark Places Netflix – KAVALUDAARI [2019] REVIEW – A LAYERED MURDER MYSTERY FROM THE WRITER OF ANDHADHUN

When you watch the film, you see a series of interesting themes; for instance: there’s this whole sweep of satanism that happened back in the day. There are freaky murder groups and father issues, there’s poverty , and there are themes of forgiveness & deceit going on too. But instead of leading you along those lines of a cleverly driven narrative, Gilles takes you through a dramatic ill-pitched screenplay that basically just checks off all the themes that are to be told. The film feels like a 90s direct-to-DVD release where someone picked up a murder novel at the garage sale and decided that he could do wonders with it.

“ Dark Places” is about Libby Day (Charlize Theron) . As a child, she witnessed the murder of her whole family, which she believes was committed by her brother. Ever since ‘that’ night, she has been living on the fame and donations of the people who have heard about the crime and want to help her out. But her life takes a turn when the donations become scarce. In-comes Lyle Wirth ( Nicholas Hoult ) & The Kill Club, who take her from being an uninterested middle-aged woman to being a detective of sorts. She starts digging into her past, and every single turn takes her to a new discovery.

While the plot of “Dark Places” might sound interesting, the execution is all haywire. Never in the film you feel the actual excitement of watching a whodunit tale. Also, while it manages to have your attention, it leaves you with a “Wait? That’s it?” kind of a deal. I haven’t read the book. But I’m sure it wasn’t meant to be made the way it was. I don’t know who I should blame more, the source material, the director, or the lackluster writing in the film.

Also, Read – ARISHADVARGA [2019] ‘LIFF’ REVIEW: A WHODUNIT THRILLER ABOUT ITS CHARACTERS MORE THAN THE MYSTERY

Charlize Theron does her best, and so does Christina Hendricks, but everyone else, including the amazing Tye Sheridan , has been under-used. They come and go off the screen through flashbacks and backtracks but never seem to make a mark. The fictional tale behind the Day family is morally ambiguous, and the themes surrounding them are deadly too. What they needed was a proper focus. While David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” did that with style where he picked up one main theme and let whatever else come to the surface on its own, Gilles takes a different approach by cramping everything he could into a two-hour long film which totally messes it up. It becomes a standard procedure of uncovering the core mystery rather than being a sequential meditation of subjects discussed.

I wouldn’t recommend “Dark Places.” However, the book might not have the same problem that the film did. Choose wisely.

Dark Places (2015) Trailer

Dark Places (2015) External Links : IMDb , Rotten Tomatoes , Wikipedia.

Dark places (2015) movie cast: charlize theron, nicholas hoult, chloe grace moretz, and tye sheridan, where to watch dark places, trending right now.

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In 1985, her entire family was murdered. 30 years later, the truth emerges.

A woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child is forced to confront the events of that day.

Gilles Paquet-Brenner

Director, Screenplay

Gillian Flynn

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Charlize Theron

Nicholas Hoult

Chloë Grace Moretz

Young Diondra Wertzner

Christina Hendricks

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Diondra Wertzner

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A review by Reno

Written by reno on july 14, 2016.

When the truth and the consciousness of the world failed to work together.

Based on the book of the same name, a story about a dreadful massacre in the rural America where a young girl lived to testify against her own brother and then she never recovered from it. So many years later, the case takes a new twist when some young crime solving enthusiastic shows interest in it and that's where the rest of the narration takes its direction.

The suspense was the highlight, though, feels like not a complicated puzzle. Brilliant writing for sure. You know, from a novel to screen is not an easy... read the rest.

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Home » Movie News » Review: Dark Places

Review: Dark Places

REVIEW: The lack of buzz or anticipation for DARK PLACES has been somewhat startling. Here’s a movie starring red-hot Charlize Theron , her MAD MAX: FURY ROAD co-star Nicholas Hoult , ANT-MAN villain Corey Stoll , Mad Men beauty Christina Hendricks and teen actress du jour Chloe Grace Moretz. Perhaps even more potentially appealing, it’s based on a novel by Gillian Flynn , the acclaimed author – and screenwriter – of that twisted blockbuster GONE GIRL. To see this movie dumped on VOD (after a short stint on Direct TV and scattered international release) is not only confusing, it triggers major red flags. Having just watched it, I now see why.

Full disclosure: I read the book by Flynn a few years back, after being properly smitten with Gone Girl. Written two years prior, the book itself is not as perversely satisfying as Flynn’s later triumph, but it’s unpredictable and filled with interesting characters. Unfortunately, the witty, incisive voice of the book is lacking in the translation to the screen, as the film is a dour, overstuffed Lifetime movie masquerading as a serious thriller. Screenwriter-Director Gilles Paquet-Brenner has a convoluted story to get through, and though it’s not an easy job touching on all of Flynn’s twists and turns, the movie is left ultimately feeling packed with endless details and exposition. This may have been one book best left on the shelf.

Theron dresses down for the role of Libby Day, a depressed and broke loser living off the proceeds from a book published about the day three members of her family – her mother (played by Christina Hendricks in flashbacks) and two sisters – were murdered. Libby accused her brother Ben ( Tye Sheridan plays young Ben while Stoll plays him as an adult) of the crime, and it made sense: the boy was into some sick stuff, not the least of which were flirtations with satan worshipping and, allegedly, child molestation. Ben is now behind bars based on Libby’s testimony, although her memories of the night in question are admittedly hazy. Still, she hasn’t looked back on that fateful occurrence, satisfied all these years later to slum it by taking money from “fans” sympathetic to her plight.

With the gifts and book residuals drying up, Libby is in a bind, but she’s lucky (for lack of a better word) to make the acquaintance of Lyle Wirth (Hoult) a slightly creepy fellow who hangs with a group called The Kill Club, a strange assemblage of amateur detectives who make it their business to look into infamous, unsolved murder cases. The night of the Day massacre is of particular interest to the Kill Club, since many of them don’t think Ben is guilty; Lyle’s offer to Libby is that he’ll pay her to help them investigate the possibility Ben didn’t commit the heinous multiple murders. Grudgingly, Libby agrees, and the deeper into her own past she digs, the more she finds her own memories may be incorrect.

The Kill Club and its assorted freaky members promises to add a tantalizing dash of eccentric weirdness to the proceedings, but Flynn’s story isn’t much interested in them. Instead, she sends Libby on a journey back to her past, where she reconnects with troubled figures who might have something to add to the case. (Flashbacks show us the days leading up to the massacre from both young Ben and his mother’s perspective.) Paquet-Brenner doesn’t add much energy to Libby’s sleuthing, and what she finds out comes across as rote and unimportant as opposed to gripping and revelatory. Visits with a girl who accused Ben of being a perv back in the day, now a stripper (Drea de Matteo), and her alcoholic bum of a father (Sean Bridgers) prove to be time-killers, just visits to literal dark places that have all the suspense of a Sunday afternoon nap. This is a movie severely lacking in urgency; considering the sordid subject matter, it’s hard to believe it’s so bland.

Adding to the lack of enthrallment is a general air of artificiality. One of DARK PLACES’ biggest problems is that no one seems to be convinced of their character; the cast feels like it’s play-acting as opposed to acting. We know Theron is a terrific actress, and she can play beaten-down as good as anyone (hello, MONSTER), but here she’s dispassionate, frankly appearing bored. Even her voiceover is impassive; perhaps Paquet-Brenner and Theron meant to imbue Libby with a simmering self-loathing, but the effect is completely flat. Hoult is decent enough as the excitable Lyle, but the script doesn’t give him much to do other than be an occasional sidekick. Moretz, not unlike Theron and some others (de Matteo comes to mind), is clearly performing , her trashy character never convincing. (She plays young Ben’s no-good girlfriend.) Only Hendricks, her big eyes always looking on the verge of tears, brings some true humanity to her role. Sadly, the story doesn’t allow her to be much more than a flashback device.

The finale of the film proves to be a major problem, and part of that is on Flynn; the answers to the past’s mysteries, when revealed, are pretty far-fetched, while some slapped-on action in the present seems to be reaching for excitement instead of genuinely providing it. Paquet-Brenner can’t solve Flynn’s issues and only exacerbates the flaws in her ridiculous denouement; DARK PLACES ends on a note of incredulity that only serves to highlight the flaws that came before it.

About the Author

Eric Walkuski is a longtime writer, critic, and reporter for JoBlo.com. He's been a contributor for over 15 years, having written dozens of reviews and hundreds of news articles for the site. In addition, he's conducted almost 100 interviews as JoBlo's New York correspondent.

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Dark Places – Release Date: 22nd January 2016

Having been written by the same author who wrote Gone Girl and this coming after the critically acclaimed film, Dark Places stays surprisingly true to the book. Its a grim, dark tale that certainly won’t be for everyone, especially considering how uncomfortably realistic it gets at times and as a mystery it keeps the suspense high until the end of the film. Unfortunately for Dark Places, the real joy in the book came with the masterful writing and its quick pace but here it just doesn’t translate to film. Its not helped by lacklustre performances and an inability to nail the pacing but when it gets going, the mystery is gripping enough to keep you watching until the end.

The story follows troubled woman Libby Day (Charlize Theron) who witnesseds her Mum and two sisters killed when she was 7. Under pressure by the police, she ultimately pointed the finger at her brother whom she believes caused the act. Fast forward to her as an adult struggling to survive on the last scraps of money her story generated in the media at the time. As she begrudgingly accepts an invitation to a crime club that discusses unsolved murders in exchange for money, shes shocked to realize there are people who believe her brother is innocent and there’s more to the story than originally meets the eye. As she gets caught up in investigating the case that’s traumatised her life, Libby begins to confront the memories of what really happened during the night. Dark Places works well with building to a climactic finale throughout and manages to keep enough mystery and allure going until the end which shockingly reveals what really happened.

The story shifts between events leading up to the fateful night the murders occurred and Libby’s current present day life and although it works well to break the story up, the characters themselves are pale imitations of their book counterparts. It could be argued that a book allows for a deeper level of characterisation but what we get here are almost caricatures of those characters that are so well realized in the book and it hurts the film’s credibility. Further to this is the confusing and sometimes jarring way the film jumps without warning. Its never explicitly revealed whether the scene is a flashback or occurring in present time which can sometimes be confusing with the rate the film flicks between the two time periods. Of course you could nitpick that the characters don’t look like their book counterparts as well and Libby is far too beautiful to be anything like what her grimy book counterpart looks like but its a minor issue and doesn’t detract too much from the film.

Overall, Dark Places is a serviceable adaptation of the book that never quite lives up to the characterisation and pacing the book revels in. Its certainly not a bad film but its slow pace and relentless dark themes won’t make it a big blockbuster anytime soon but it does stay faithful to the book with a story that almost matches it beat for beat. The mystery is intriguing enough to keep you guessing until the end but despite its best intentions, Dark Places doesn’t quite hit the spot to make it anything but an average mystery and a disappointing follow up to Gone Girl.

Verdict - 4.5/10 4.5/10

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Dark Places Review

Hot on the heels of Gone Girl , David Fincher’s dementedly enjoyable Gillian Flynn adaptation, comes a second Flynn-based movie under the guidance of Gilles Paquet-Brenner. With it comes another stellar cast, Flynn’s built-in fanbase, and a morose story involving secret societies that obsess over (un)solved mysteries of the past – another home run you might assume, right?

Wrong. Dark Places doesn’t come across nearly as dark as Flynn’s book reads, and can’t hold a candle to the twisted insanity Fincher was able to find in the author’s work not even a year ago. Brenner’s deadly story feels watered down and slight when compared to the tone you’d imagine from Flynn’s novelization, and fails to create any drama worth a sadistic chill.

Moral of the story: it’s exactly what’d you’d expect from a buried DirectTV release starring such immense talents as Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Corey Stoll, Christina Hendricks, and Chloë Grace Moretz (among MANY others). If those names are going straight to VOD, you know there’s a problem.

Dark Places tells the tragic tale of Libby Day (Charlize Theron), who watched her family die during a gruesome break-in murder when she was a young child. As if the event wasn’t horrific enough, the only other survivor was her brother Ben (Corey Stoll), who she pegs as guilty despite some wonky evidence.

We catch up with Libby years later, while she’s living off of the generous donations of many sympathetic hearts from across the country. With the cheques coming in less frequently, it’s time for Libby to get a job – which she avoids by accepting an offer to appear at a strange club run by Lyle Wirth (Nicholas Hoult). She visits a society called the Kill Club (KC for short), where criminal enthusiasts meet to discuss and refute famous court cases, and humors a few of their theories before storming out of the room in a huff. She’s convinced Ben HAS to be the killer, but the different theories start to stir a bit of doubt in Libby – a doubt that reopens the case and sends her on an investigative journey into pure darkness.

Unfortunately, Libby is not a character we care much to invest in, and that’s our first hurdle. Here we are, trying to sympathize with a haunted survivor who steals from the poor and preys off their gratuity, capitalizing on the generosity of man for her own benefit. Sure – living through your family’s execution might screw your head a bit for the future. I don’t argue that obvious notion. But Libby’s deep-seeded torment finds itself being conveyed without any charisma on the part of Theron.

Libby is a recluse powered by money, until she randomly starts caring that her brother might be innocent after spending decades in jail. Why suddenly care about a buried family history that you’ve repressed (with little success) for so long? Libby’s investigation is extremely weak (straight-up Googling people’s addresses), her cold demeanor becomes tiresome, and the cat and mouse game that plays out is missing an abusive tension that’s so sorely needed to properly respect Flynn’s horrifying story. Ben’s guilty sentence is perfectly structured to be immediately unbelievable, and a slew of evidence coincidentally comes pouring out through the most basic digging on Libby’s part – a boring tactic that sucks most of the life out of Dark Places .

Aside from Theron’s inability to channel Libby’s inner darkness, Gilles Paquet-Brenner provides no atmospheric help when trying to hit upon the farthest reaches of Libby’s inner anguish. You’d assume Dark Places would be on the grim level of Gone Girl ‘s morose trickery, but this second Gillian Flynn adaptation is rather bland and inconsequential. More background about Wirth’s unique Kill Club would have been welcomed, along with a more dangerous mystery worth solving.

Brenner’s direction is rather generic and unremarkable, taking away from the twisted intrigue that should come from Libby’s slow unraveling of the truth. From her visits with Ben – which make it obvious from the get-go that Corey Stoll’s former devil-worshipping self had absolutely nothing to do with his mother and sister’s deaths – to boring lapses of Libby’s begrudging detective work, Dark Places trudges through mystery movie generics without offering anything unique to the genre Gods.

Plain and simple – Dark Places is a two hour chore that wastes an absolutely stacked cast on one of the more over-stuffed films of 2015. There’s so much content jammed in this paltry case, yet Brenner barely manages to say anything of note through his vision. And Theron’s performance says even less. Yes, Dark Places is the straight-to-VOD ensemble disaster you’re afraid it’s going to be, which is an inexcusable shame. Sorry Gillian Flynn, at least you can still thank David Fincher for one faithfully winning adaptation. Just go ahead and pretend that this one never happened.

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Dark Places Discussion

Anyone watch it? Came out on iTunes yesterday.

I thought it was alright. Definitely not on par with the Gone Girl movie though.

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Dark places.

Violence, teen sex, drugs in book-based thriller.

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The 10 Darkest Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked

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A prolific filmmaker who rather consistently made suspenseful, darkly funny, and inventive films, Alfred Hitchcock is about as famous as filmmakers get, and his influence/legacy is undeniable. Hitchcock’s body of work delivers when it comes to both quantity and quality, with the films contained within also being diverse. There were few – if any – genres Hitchcock didn’t touch during his directorial career.

But he was particularly adept at making thrillers perhaps more than any other genre, some of them being dark, intense, or even horrific in ways that make them remain impactful, even all these decades on from release. Below is a rundown of the darkest movies Alfred Hitchcock ever made. Admittedly, some were probably more shocking back when they came out, but there are still things to be unnerved and surprised by contained within each, even when watched today .

10 'Rebecca' (1940)

Starring: laurence olivier, joan fontaine, george sanders.

There was only ever one Alfred Hitchcock movie that won Best Picture at the Oscars , and that movie was Rebecca . Concerning this ranking, Rebecca gets things off to a fairly mild start (the nastier stuff is still to come). It’s more subtle than some of Hitchcock’s later films, and was made at a time when American movies had to imply darker or more violent things, rather than outright show them.

Rebecca still packs a decent punch by the standards of a psychological thriller more than eight decades old, though, following a woman who finds herself living in the shadow of her new husband’s deceased ex-wife. It’s all very atmospheric and classy, but there’s a darkness at the core of Rebecca , owing to the ways it deals with death, grief, and lingering emotional distress.

Not available

9 'The Birds' (1963)

Starring: tippi hedren, rod taylor, jessica tandy.

Melanie Daniels, played by Tippi Hedren, standing in a room looking ahead and wearing a matching light green jacket, shirt, skirt, and belt in The Birds

By the 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock was able to get away with a good deal more than he could during the 1940s, with movies like the aforementioned Rebecca . As such, The Birds was something that had more in-your-face violence than some of his earlier works, though it is a film that’s admittedly pretty tame by the standards of more modern-day horror.

Still, The Birds does effectively make the titular creatures scary through a few attack sequences, but more impactful are scenes showing the aftermaths of bird-related attacks. It’s a movie that takes a very everyday animal and transforms it into something nightmarish , to the point where those impacted by The Birds might not be able to see a seemingly innocent flock of them in the future without thinking about this particular film.

8 'Shadow of a Doubt' (1943)

Starring: teresa wright, joseph cotten, macdonald carey.

Uncle Charlie on a payphone in Shadow of a Doubt

Like a decent number of thrillers (Hitchcock-directed or otherwise) from the 1940s, Shadow of a Doubt is a slow-burn , but an undeniably effective one. Its terror and paranoia are subdued for a good chunk of the runtime, though the feeling that something is off never quite leaves one’s mind throughout, by design. Shadow of a Doubt is about a young woman’s concern and/or paranoia regarding someone who's apparently a family member , and the film is effective in getting one in her mind.

Such is the strength of a great psychological thriller, and the truth here unravels bit by bit, with certain things likely to keep one guessing until close to the end. Shadow of a Doubt isn't as horrific as other Hitchcock movies (namely, some of his later ones), and there isn't a huge amount of on-screen violence, either. Instead, it’s the psychological impact of the film that makes it quite dark throughout.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Watch on TCM

7 'Sabotage' (1936)

Starring: sylvia sidney, oskar homolka, desmond tester.

John Loader as Detective Sergeant Ted Spencer and Sylvia Sidney as Mrs Verloc sitting together in Hitchcock's Sabotage

Undoubtedly one of the most underrated Alfred Hitchcock movies , Sabotage was made a few years before the filmmaker started to make a name for himself in America. Of his early British movies, Sabotage is arguably one of the very best, and it’s almost certainly his darkest movie made before the 1940s… though explaining why that's so would be giving away too much.

As for what can be said? Well, it’s a movie that doesn’t waste time, given it clocks in at under 80 minutes, and it’s suspenseful pretty much the whole way throughout. The story revolves around suspicion and paranoia (Hitchcock staples), but the explosive title is also lived up to in some surprising ways. Sabotage goes places that not many films of its era chose to go, and for that, it still holds up as admirably gutsy, not to mention borderline nihilistic in parts .

6 'Strangers on a Train' (1951)

Starring: farley granger, ruth roman, robert walker.

Robert Walker leaning over Ruth Roman as she sits on a couch in Strangers on a Train

The premise of Strangers on a Train is simple and wonderfully twisted. As the titles promise, two people who don’t know each other meet on a train. They strike up a conversation that quickly turns morbid, with one of them believing they could each commit a murder for the other, and in turn, get away with removing a less-than-desirable individual from each of their respective lives without being suspected of murder.

One takes it as banter, while the other proves himself to be deathly serious about the whole death thing , and then Strangers on a Train explores the consequences that follow. It’s not graphically violent, but the emotional intensity of it all ensures Strangers on a Train stays dark, albeit in a morbidly entertaining way that also makes it one of Hitchcock’s very best films .

Strangers on a Train

5 'marnie' (1964), starring: tippi hedren, sean connery, diane baker.

Sean Connery as Mark, in a dinner suit, looking at Tippi Hedren as Marnie in 'Marnie'

One year on from The Birds , Alfred Hitchcock re-teamed with that film’s star, Tippi Hedren , and had her play a character dealing with something arguably more fearsome than swarms of killer birds : an emotionally cold and rather twisted Sean Connery . He plays the titular character’s boss in the film in question, Marnie , and spends much of the movie's runtime blackmailing and psychologically tormenting her after he learns she’s stolen from him.

The most harrowing things in Marnie mostly happen just off-screen, but the impact is felt regardless. It takes a flawed protagonist and pits her against a much more domineering and intimidating antagonist, and thoroughly explores the uneasy relationship the pair end up having. It’s a supremely uncomfortable film from start to finish, even when watched now, 60-ish years on from its release.

Marnie (1964)

Rent on Apple TV

4 'Rope' (1948)

Starring: john dall, farley granger, james stewart.

Rope would make for a solid double feature if paired with Strangers on a Train , given both have snappy premises, prove morbidly entertaining, and feature Farley Granger in a lead role . Rope keeps things even more confined and immediate, though, given it takes place entirely in one apartment , has a small cast of characters, and plays out in almost exact real-time.

Essentially, the whole thing involves a party being thrown by two college students, only they’ve murdered a classmate right before it starts, and they hide the body as a twisted social experiment of sorts, to see if they can get away with the murder, all the while interacting with people who knew the deceased . It’s only really violent at the start, for the murder in question, but Rope stays morbid (and sometimes darkly funny) throughout because of its premise; because that body is always just out of sight, and could be found at any moment.

Rope (1948)

3 'psycho' (1960), starring: anthony perkins, janet leigh, vera miles.

A beyond-legendary horror movie that hardly needs an introduction, Psycho is perhaps the most famous of all Alfred Hitchcock movies, and it comes very close to being his darkest and most twisted. It follows a woman trying to flee her life with a large amount of cash, and what happens when she makes a stop at the infamous Bates Motel.

The big surprises in Psycho are probably well-known at this point, but they still make something of an impact every time, even if you know they're coming. It’s easy to imagine people in 1960 being genuinely shocked or even appalled by some of the things that happen in this film, and it’s easy to admire its gutsiness when it comes to both the narrative and some of the violence depicted . Don’t bother with that remake, though .

2 'Frenzy' (1972)

Starring: jon finch, barry foster, barbara leigh-hunt.

When talking about violence alone, the only Alfred Hitchcock movie that genuinely tops Psycho is Frenzy , which he made in the early 1970s, conveniently making use of the fact that censorship was loosening throughout most film industries at the time. To drive home the kind of content found in Frenzy , it was the only Hitchcock movie to receive an R-rating (well, Psycho got an R-rating upon re-release), and it certainly earned it.

Frenzy is about a serial killer going around London strangling women to death, and the plight of a man who becomes a suspect but protests he’s innocent ( Hitchcock did love his “wrong man” narratives ). It’s a winning crime movie and an undoubtedly sick one at times , but there’s also some dark humor to be found in Frenzy . Whether that mitigates or accentuates the more violent stuff is up to the viewer and their reaction, really.

1 'Vertigo' (1958)

Starring: james stewart, kim novak, barbara bel geddes.

Kim Novak standing under a bridge in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo

Vertigo is perhaps the greatest of all Alfred Hitchcock films, and though it’s not nearly as violent as Psycho , Frenzy , or even The Birds , it does go to darker places emotionally. It’s honestly a rather harrowing and persistently uncomfortable film, delving deep into obsession in a way that doesn’t necessarily feel thrilling in the traditional sense; it just feels (intentionally) unnerving in the way it explores a character’s madness and intense desire.

It's a film that shows how one can make something extremely dark and intense without relying on graphic violence or other mature content of a purely visual nature . Instead, Vertigo goes deeper than most psychological thriller/drama movies, and builds toward what’s probably the bleakest ending of any Hitchcock film. The resulting film is hard to shake, even if one might want to.

NEXT: The Most Violent PG-13 Movies of All Time, Ranked

COMMENTS

Dark Places movie review & film summary (2015)
Dark Places. Gillian Flynn 's script for David Fincher 's incredible adaptation of " Gone Girl " was a master class in genre, taking an admittedly ridiculous, twisting and turning narrative and making its plot holes forgivable through sheer force of entertainment value. It makes sense that another of Flynn's novels, the sinister ...
Dark Places (2015)
Rated: C-Jul 4, 2020 Full Review Mikel Zorrilla Espinof 'Dark Places' is a complete waste of time that wastes Theron, Moretz and the rest of the cast to give us a lazy thriller.
Dark Places
Libby Day (Charlize Theron) was only seven years old when her mother and two sisters were brutally murdered in their rural Kansas farmhouse. In court, the traumatized child pointed the finger at her brother, Ben (Tye Sheridan), and her testimony put the troubled 16-year-old in prison for life. Twenty-five years later, a broke and desperate Libby has run through donations from a sympathetic ...
Dark Places
Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Apr 6, 2016. Marija Djurovic Cairo360. Wishy-washy and all-round characterless, Dark Places is neither as dark nor as daring as its synopsis, title and ...
Dark Places (2015)
6/10. Decent And Enjoyable Enough. dfa120374 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.
Film Review: 'Dark Places'
Film Review: 'Dark Places'. Another sinister mystery from the imagination of 'Gone Girl' novelist Gillian Flynn, this Kansas-set potboiler would benefit from a few good twists. No matter how ...
Dark Places (2015 film)
Dark Places is a 2015 American mystery film written and directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, based on Gillian Flynn's 2009 novel of the same name and stars Charlize Theron, Christina Hendricks, Nicholas Hoult, and Chloë Grace Moretz.. The film was released in France on April 8, 2015, [4] and in the United States on August 7, 2015, by A24. [5] The film received mostly negative reviews.
'Dark Places': Film Review
Editors Douglas Crise ( Birdman) and Billy Fox deserve credit for tying up so many loose ends, although the fast pacing and constant crosscutting ultimately gloss over the more intriguing aspects ...
Dark Places (2015) Movie Review from Eye for Film
However, Charlize Theron as Libby is electrifying. Her repressed energy is like a ticking time bomb. In jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap she looks like a contender and performs with steely conviction. Simply watching her, as this woman who hates to be touched, is to feel the desolation of those dark places. Reviewed on: 09 Feb 2016
Dark Places (Movie Review)
Dark Places (Movie Review) Sophie's rating: ... Dark Places, were snatched up and an equally star-studded cast was gathered. Starring Charlize Theron as the adult survivor of a massacre that killed her older sisters and mother when she was younger, the story slowly unwinds what really happened that day. Libby (Theron) begrudgingly joins a group ...
Dark Places Movie Review
Our review: Parents say ( 1 ): Kids say ( 1 ): Based on Gillian Flynn's novel, this thriller will no doubt pale in comparison to Gone Girl, but it has its own merits, namely a psychologically rich, complex storyline and fine performances. DARK PLACES' biggest asset is Theron; hiding under a baseball cap and an ill-fitting coat, her Libby is ...
‎Dark Places (2015) directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner • Reviews, film
In 1985, her entire family was murdered. 30 years later, the truth emerges. A woman who survived the brutal killing of her family as a child is forced to confront the events of that day. Remove Ads.
Dark Places (2015)
Libby Day (Theron) was only eight years old when her mother and two sisters were brutally murdered in their rural Kansas farmhouse. In court, she pointed the finger at her brother Ben (Sheridan), and her testimony put the troubled 16-year-old in prison for life. Twenty-five years later, Libby appears at a gathering of true-crime aficionados ...
Dark Places
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Dark Places Is Dark, But Doesn't Go Anyplace
Is Dark, But Doesn't Go Anyplace. "I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ" are the opening words of narration in Gilles Paquet-Brenner's Dark Places, adapted from Gillian ( Gone ...
Review: 'Dark Places,' based on Gillian Flynn's novel, lacks 'Gone Girl
"Dark Places" is an adaptation of Gillian Flynn's pleasurably twisted novel published before "Gone Girl," yet it feels like something rushed and imitative of the writer's blackly comic sensibility.
Dark Places (2015) Movie Review: "Home Is Where The Lies Are.."
Dark Places (2015) Movie Review: I still remember how "Gone Girl" began.The very first background score to chasing Amy. Everything just made sense. I recently saw "Dark Places" on Netflix. The first few things that come to my mind while I sit down to write about it would be - A pixie-haired Charlize Theron in a green-colored cap & leather jacket and a brilliant background score that ...
Dark Places (2015)
Dark Places. (2015) R 08/07/2015 (US) Thriller , Mystery , Drama , Crime 1h 53m. User. Score. What's your Vibe ? Play Trailer. In 1985, her entire family was murdered. 30 years later, the truth emerges.
Review: Dark Places
REVIEW: The lack of buzz or anticipation for DARK PLACES has been somewhat startling. Here's a movie starring red-hot Charlize Theron, her MAD MAX: FURY ROAD co-star Nicholas Hoult, ANT-MAN ...
Dark Places Film Review
The mystery is intriguing enough to keep you guessing until the end but despite its best intentions, Dark Places doesn't quite hit the spot to make it anything but an average mystery and a disappointing follow up to Gone Girl. 4.5/10. Despite its obvious comparisons to Gone Girl, Dark Places stays surprisingly true to the book.
Dark Places Review
Dark Places Review When a movie boasts such a loaded cast but still finds itself sentenced to a buried fate, there's usually a reason. Or in the case of Dark Places, there are many reasons.
Dark Places Discussion : r/movies
Dark Places was the first Gillian Flynn novel I ever read. I picked it up on the day my mother had come back to my state of Pennsylvania. She left for Florida when I was 11 or 12, I believe. ... Movies With Dark Themes; Dark City 1998 Review; His Dark Materials Review; Dark Fantasy Books; Movies With A Dark Atmosphere; Dark Urban Fantasy; Top Posts
Dark Places: Video Review
Is Dark Places OK for your child? Watch Common Sense Media's video review to help you make informed decisions. ... Movie Review:58 age 15+ Memory Movie Review. 1:07 age 16+ Nightmare Alley Movie Review. 1:09 age 16+ Old Movie Review. 1:01 age 14+ The Guilty Movie Review. 1:00 ...
Dark Asset Review
With the writers of the movie placing their bets on trying to make many pivotal plot beats take place in the past instead of the present, this heavy-handed journey through time feels like a slog ...
10 Darkest Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked
Please verify your email address. You've reached your account maximum for followed topics. A prolific filmmaker who rather consistently made suspenseful, darkly funny, and inventive films ...

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Review: ‘Dark Places,’ based on Gillian Flynn’s novel, lacks ‘Gone Girl’s’ suspense