Category: Films

Unfortunately no Garth Marenghi in sight…

Where to start?

Dark Places borrows heavily from the real life story of the Amityville murders as well as Truman Capote’s true crime novel In Cold Blood. Other plot points such as a nod to the hysteria around devil worshipping in 1980’s America and child abuse are seemingly thrown it at random.

Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl (another film I hated) is also behind the book from which Dark Places is based and it massively shows. Like Gone Girl almost every character is a cliché and none of the increasingly bizarre story rings true. Gone Girl and Dark Places must be two of the most ridiculous, far fetched films released in the last ten years.

Instead of Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike we have Charlize Theron and woefully miscast Nicholas Hoult. Alongside them and doing nothing to improve matters are Chloe Grace Moretz playing a cow murdering, pouting maniac and Christina Hendricks who is the only person to come out of this mess with any credibility.

Dark Places is nasty, predictable and in some places totally fucking laughable. The idea that the events leading up to the home invasion and murder that drives the plot could ever happen is completely absurd. I am actually offended that Gillian fucking Flynn and director Gilles Paquet-Brenner would serve up such a trite, daft and embarrassing piece of work. There is barely a single scene that didn’t drive me further away from the unintelligible and banal story and by the end I would have been laughing out loud had I not been consumed with a white hot rage.

Without a doubt the worst film I have seen this year.