Dark Places (2015)

Dark Places (2015) I don’t think I’ve seen another film by the director Gilles Paquet-Brenner, and it didn’t make me happy to know that the story of this film is also by the author of Gone Girl, given that my girlfriend hated it and I didn’t love the 2014 film.

In any case, it’s by no means one of Fincher’s best if I compare it to Alien 3, Se7en, The Game, Fight Club or even Panic Room.

The cast is excellent! Charlize Theron, Chloë Grace Moretz, Nicholas Hoult and Christina Hendricks are all a pleasure to watch.

‘Dark Places’ is not just a dark crime thriller. Over and above the police investigation, which moves back and forth between the present and the past, it is above all the characters that interest Paquet-Brenner. There’s Libby, traumatised by the murder of her family when she was young, Ben, the boy who was locked up in prison (was it wrongly?) or Patty, the loving mother ready to do anything for her family, each character has cracks that are fascinating to explore. We prefer this melancholy description of these broken characters to a police investigation with a somewhat implausible resolution.

‘Dark Places’ is the second film based on a novel by Gillian Flynn (who wrote “Appearances”, the novel from which “Gone Girl” is based) to be adapted for the screen…

Would David Fincher’s ‘Gone Girl’, considered excellent by many, have overshadowed Paquet-Brenner’s latest by being the first? Apparently, this seemed to be a serious handicap for this new film, as the comparison kept cropping up in so many reviews…

And yet, without probably reaching the level of the first film, ‘Dark Places’ has plenty to interest viewers, and even more! Neither of these films is ultra-good or excellent in my eyes, but both have a fair amount of interest.

That said, apart from the author, there aren’t really any similarities. In fact, there’s nothing comparable with ‘Gone Girl’, since the two stories have neither the same stakes nor the same suspense.

Here, we delve into the psychology of a woman who survived a murder that took place in her house thirty years ago, mainly through a group of unsolved crime buffs, and, by way of ricochet and flashback, we follow some of the members of this family, whose brother and mother reveal their fragility and suffering. And the murder that is about to take place there will, for the occasion, be more of a questioning and, as a result, a new approach, a new light on events than the expected real plot that seems to be lacking here. The incessant shifts between the two periods are very natural and allow us to situate and understand each character’s situation and problems. The construction of the story may seem muddled or pointless, but on the contrary, it often creates parallels, almost bridges, between the lives of the past and the present, gradually elucidating and highlighting forgotten details. So everything is often judicious and well-crafted, to ensure that we buy into the story.

Charlize Theron pulls it off very well, and we get an intense sense of the trauma that is still raw and the emotional loss that is very much present, just as we appreciate the performance of her (young) brother, who is always spot-on, played by Tye Sheridan with his dark, stubborn look!

So it’s more the spirit of this film that we feel, and less the tension or suspense that was a specific feature of ‘Gone Girl’. In fact, comparing these two films is a bit of a shame for ‘Dark Places’, which has absolutely nothing to do with them.

Here, we have an atmospheric film, a very dark family drama treated with other priorities by a different director who makes his own choices based on the same author, but from a novel that is almost the opposite.

Objectively speaking, the film has nothing to demerit it, despite a few shortcomings in terms of coherence perhaps, and in terms of certain characters and what they have become thirty years on, not always being credible. And that’s often one of the pitfalls!In the end, it’s an interesting subject with complex and interesting personalities, in the service of a dark and rather twisted investigation, so you might as well see the aspects that make it so strong!

I admit that I didn’t find the film exciting throughout, but it’s the kind of complex story that makes you want to talk about it, break it down, discuss it and even watch it again, after all.