And this is the primary reason that Libby accepts a somewhat ghoulish offer from Lyle Wirth (Nicholas Hoult, in his second pairing with Theron this year after Mad Max: Fury Road), a rather benign-looking young man who is a member of “The Kill Club,” a group of true crime enthusiasts who have turned their fascination with infamous murders into active investigations. The club wants Libby to provide them with first-hand information and aid in their investigation of her family’s massacre, particularly because they are convinced that Libby’s brother Ben (Corey Stoll), whom Libby fingered as the murderer when he was 15, is actually an innocent man and has thus been unfairly imprisoned for the past several decades.

Libby is steadfast that her bother was the murderer—she was there, after all—and for a while it seems like that is the case. She visits him in prison, the first time she has seen him in years, and the tension between them is palpable. Ben seems resigned to his place behind bars, and Libby argues that, if he is innocent, why has he not tried to appeal his conviction? Yet, seeing Ben and revisiting the places of her past start to gnaw at Libby, leading her deeper and deeper into events that she has tried desperately to repress.

The film, which is based on the 2009 novel by Gillian Flynn (whose novel Gone Girl was adapted last year by David Fincher), divides its time fairly equally between past and present. As Libby becomes more and more invested in the Kill Club’s investigation, the film cuts back to events 25 years earlier, when Libby (played by Sterling Jerins) was a bright-eyed 7-year-old and Ben (played by Tye Sheridan) was an angry, unruly, insecure teenager who dyed his hair black and spent much of his time with his girlfriend Diondra (Chloë Grace Moretz), a rebellious rich girl full of sneers and side glances. We also meet their mother, Patty (Christina Hendricks), a single mother trying desperately to keep the family farm afloat even as all economic indicators suggest it to be an impossible task. Interestingly, the scenes in the past tend to be the film’s strongest asset, as they successfully paint a compelling portrait of a small-town rural family barely being held together by a well-meaning parent who is simply stretched too thin.

The present-day scenes don’t work nearly as well, even though Charlize Theron gives a strong performance as Libby, suggesting a woman who has buried her pain beneath a veneer of cynicism and isolation. Often wearing a baseball cap that shadows her face, Libby holds her body in such a way that no one can get close to her. She is like a feral animal that is always ready to snap at anything that comes too close. As the film progresses we develop more and more sympathy for her, partially because we see more of her past and partially because the investigation starts to chip away at all the armor she’s built around herself.

The division of Dark Places into interlocking past and present stories connected by a mystery is exactly the same structure used by writer/director Gilles Paquet-Brenner in his previous film, Sarah’s Key (2010), which was also a stronger film when it was in the past tense. Paquet-Brenner tends to draw out solid performances from his actors, and he and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (The Hurt Locker, Captain Phillips) know their way around dark shadows and unsettling locations, and in some of its best moments the film veers close to true horror territory. Dark Places, with its titular promise to lead us into disquieting spaces both literal and psychological, certainly maintains enough interest, although it never quite attains the gripping level of intensity to which it clearly aspires.

Copyright ©2015 James Kendrick

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