Gillian Flynn had a mega-hit with her best selling novel Gone Girl and the film version, which she wrote the screenplay for, was a huge success as well. Dark Places is based off another of her novels and while it’s a confident, sometimes compelling murder thriller, the pacing and direction fail to capture the magic that David Fincher was able to harness with Gone Girl.
This isn’t a bad film. It is super dark but with a name like “Dark Places”, that’s kind of expected. In some ways, it plays more like a 1990’s legal thriller such as The Pelican Brief with a lot of mystery and slow hints being fed to the audience as the plot unravels. Charlize Theron is great as the lead and Nicolas Hoult is solid as well if under-utilized. The direction isn’t very interesting and the pacing is slow (could have trimmed 20 minutes from this film and it would have been better for it). While I enjoyed this, I’m not sure it’s for everyone. Still, if you like murder mystery / thrillers, this is one to check out from this year.