by Frank Calvillo
I remember reading once how Charlize Theron was considered for the role of Amazing Amy in the adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel “Gone Girl.” While I totally loved what Rosamund Pike was able to do with that role, I couldn’t help but imagine Theron in the kind of world Flynn was able to create with its unique brand of rich characters and compelling darkness.
It was with great excitement then when I sat down to watch Theron in Dark Places, a thriller also based on one of Flynn’s novels, to see what the Oscar-winning Theron would be able to do with her turn at playing a Flynn heroine. However, Dark Places ends up being so incredibly mishandled, even the seemingly unstoppable power of Theron and Flynn falls flat.
Dark Places opens on an ordinary night in Kansas in 1985 where young Libby Day (Sterling Jerins) finds herself the only survivor of her family’s brutal slaying by her older brother Ben (Tye Sheridan). Flash forward to the present where adult Ben (Corey Stoll) is imprisoned and a grown up Libby (Charlize Theron) is a closed off wreck of a woman living off of pity donations from the public regarding her traumatic experience as well as proceeds from a ghost-written book on her life. When the funds begin to dry up, Libby accepts a personal appearance offer from a young man named Lyle Wirth (Nicholas Hoult), the leader of a club consisting of people re-examining murder cases they feel were never truly solved. Following Lyle’s many proclamations of Ben’s innocence, Libby finds herself reliving the terrifying time once again.
I’ve never been a fan of darkness for the sake of darkness, and it seems that director and screenwriter Gilles Paquet-Brenner has piled on so much here, that the audience can feel themselves becoming almost as numb as Libby. There’s something to be said about the hard-hitting power of darkness on screen, but in Dark Places, it seems the everyone in front of and behind the camera seems hell bent on making the film bleaker and more disturbing (the scene featuring teenagers attacking cows with axes comes to mind) without any resulting impact.
That’s really the problem with Dark Places. Though the characters and their plight read stark enough on paper to garner sympathy, it’s almost impossible to feel sorry for anyone on the screen. Because the mechanics of the case are never truly made clear or even highlighted in a way that allows the audience to be involved, its impossible to really care about anything happening in Dark Places. All of this extends to the central character and the fact that she remains closed off from everyone, including the audience, until the film’s final minutes. There’s no real reason to care if Libby finds out the truth or not because there’s never any real sympathy built up for her.
Adding to the lack of caring is an incredibly misjudged execution to Flynn’s novel. The jumping back and forth between the past and the present is horribly erratic, while extended sequences set in their own time feel choppy and lacking in any kind of solid directorial focus. Even more frustrating is the fact that the simplified script oftentimes has the audience waiting for Libby to discover what they already know, leading to a tiring deja vu feeling when she finally does catch up. Meanwhile, Theron’s voiceover narration is skillfully done, but it tends to give Dark Places more of stylized noirish feel that doesn’t work with the rawness the film was going for.
For the most part, all of the actors do some admirable work here with Christina Hendricks coming off as lovely and tragic as Libby and Ben’s poverty-stricken mother and Theron and Stoll being the most powerful in their three scenes together.
The only questionable one of the bunch is Chloe Grace Moretz as Diondra, Ben’s girlfriend. Gifted with the film’s flashiest role, the actress ends up bringing too many different elements to the part, forcing Diondra to remain a character in a novel, rather than a flesh and blood person on the screen.
Some time back, there was an announcement in the trades of how Theron had sold a script she was to star in as well as produce, which was simply titled Murder Mystery. The film sounded as if it drew from the various madcap whodunnits which people once treasured, yet no longer exist. Since then the project has stalled in development hell, which means it may likely never be made. Hopefully Dark Places was able to scratch Theron’s mystery itch.
The Package
Two featurettes accompany the film. The first, Bringing Dark Places to Light, has cast and filmmakers gushing about what a fantastic thriller they’ve made, while the second, About the Author: Gillian Flynn and Dark Places, pays rightful homage to the woman and her work.
The Lowdown
Although Dark Places does have shades of what made Gone Girl so compelling, it ultimately ends up being just a delinquent cousin to that story.
