Dark Places (2015)

I created an account just to leave the 2 star rating this movie deserves. Not a thrilling moment, character to care about or coherent storyline to be found here. This may be the most disjointed story I've ever had the misfortune of seeing. Fifteen minutes in and I couldn't have cared less what actually happened to the family or who was responsible. The satanic ritual side story had NOTHING to do with the plot whatsoever and totally could have been left out. Charlize Theron, who's typically great, was obviously phoning in this performance. Please, do yourself a favor, watch something else. Anything else!

About good thrillers, they need to suspend audience with darkness. This one did not. Its excessive plots spoiled over common reasoning. I had hard time to follow the irrational storyline which killed my curiosity eventually. Hiring a hit man carrying out murders in order to receive insurance payments is a common scheme since the invention of insurance. However, the author might think she reinvented the scenario, she did not. She indeed facilitated a lot of horrors to resonate audience with the crimes. But it failed to deliver thrills and chills unlike "Gone Girl" ultimately did. Psychopathic scenarios are mostly welcomed by thriller movies. Some of them truly horrified audiences to the core. However, this one failed to do so. The reason might be it intended to tempt audience with realities. No one was bothered by the possibilities of "Gone Girl" happening in real lives. Moreover, just like other successful thrillers, "Silence of Lamb", "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" even "The Girl on the Train" were mainly focusing on those unbelievable coincidences to contrive stories which would not merely possibly happened for real even when all the stars align in the sky. Documentaries are for the reality. Even though they are still done with some explainable coincidences to entice audiences. Directors only have one choice to make great thrillers which is weaving all the impossibilities together and bringing to the screen without concerning any probable realities in them. This one unfortunately mocked that.

DARK PLACES is a slow-paced and realistic slice of American crime with a slightly muddled storyline. The narrative is split between two time frames, the present day and the historical past, but the present day plotting is rather weak and limited despite the presence of established stars including Charlize Theron and Nicholas Hoult in the cast. The historical story is much more interesting and involves the build-up to a family massacre which has an eventual reveal that you certainly won't see coming. The film utilises the real-life Satanism scare of the 1990s to good effect and keeps you watching in order to find out the answers, although it's not a movie that you'll come back to once you've found out what really did happen.

From 2015, "Dark Places" stars Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Christina Hendricks, and Corey Stoll in an adaptation of a novel by Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl).Theron is Libby Day, one of two living survivors of the mass murder of her family in 1985 in Kansas. Where else - it's where the murders in In Cold Blood took place. The other survivor is her brother Ben (Stoll), a teen at the time, who has been in prison for the last 25 years for the murders, due to what she told the police.Libby is a cold, closed-off human being, understandably, given what she went through as a child; she cashed in on the murders and never worked. As a child people sent her money, and she also wrote a book -- well, her name was on it and she was paid, but she states that she never even read it. Now that she's an adult, she has $412 left and has never had a job. So when she's approached by a crime club called the Kill Club, which discusses and works on famous murder cases, she takes their money to make an appearance.Though she insists her brother is guilty, Libby takes more money to actually investigate for the club's president (Hoult). It has to be done right away because storage problems in the state building mean that cases more than ten years old will be destroyed in a few weeks.Flashbacks recreate the circumstances surrounding the murders, showing her mother (Hendricks) trying to hold onto their farm despite poverty, her alcoholic husband who shows up for money, Ben being accused of child molestation and of practicing Satanism, and Ben's relationship with Diondra (Chloe Grace Moretz), who seems to be the town bad girl.Slowly Libby is able to put the pieces together and learns the stunning truth.I don't understand the vilification of this movie - what has it ever done to anyone? A 26% fresh on rottentomatoes.com. Was it Hate Charlize Day or what? This is a terrific, suspenseful film that will keep you guessing right to the end.Theron gives a frosty performance, right on for this isolated, unfriendly woman who has cut herself off from the world and people. She wears a baseball cap throughout most of the film; we don't really get to see her true beauty unless it's off. There is a book called "Flesh and Fantasy" which has a chapter on How to Win an Oscar. One way is for a beautiful movie star to make herself look bad, as Theron did in Monster. She prefers to make films that are not about her gorgeous looks, and this was one.Christina Hendricks does a great job as Libby's downtrodden mother - she looks and acts defeated - a far cry from being one of the glamorous stars of "Mad Men."For fans of this genre, and I gather for people who haven't read the book, I think this is a very well done film that deserves to be seen as a rental or on Amazon streaming.