Starring: Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Christina Hendricks.
Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner.
Genre: Mystery & Suspense, Drama.
Running time: 106 minutes.
Now showing at: Cinema Magic, Metroplex Mall Naalya.
Libby Day, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, is the sole survivor of a massacre in Kinnakee, Kansas, a fictional rural town. After witnessing the murders of her two sisters and mother, in what appears to be a satanic cult ritual, she escapes through a window and later testifies in court against her teenage brother.
She testifies against her brother as the person responsible for massacre. Lonely and torn, Libby, in need of money so she meets with a group of amateur investigators who believe that her brother is innocent of the crime.
With the group’s support, she begins an investigation of the events of the massacre, tracking down other witnesses and possible suspects. She revisits the crime and uncovers the wrenching truths that led up to that tragic night.
The movie is based on a movie by a novel by the same title, by American author Gillian Flynn who has written two other acclaimed novels, Sharp Objects and Gone Girl. The novel deals with class issues in rural America, intense poverty and the satanic cult hysteria that swept the United States in the 1980s.
Dark Places was shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and won the Dark Scribe Magazine Black Quill Award for Dark Genre Novel of the Year.
Movie critic, Miriam Di Nunzio of Chicago Sun-Times writes that the third offering from Flynn, Dark Places does its best to stir a multitude of emotions within us, but in doing so, the film feels contrived and hurried.
“A puzzling thriller with intensely fascinating characters, Dark Places is a film that will restore your faith in procedural mysteries,” Mike Reyes, of CinemaBlend.com, reviews.
