Movie Review: A Dark Place

A Dark Place ** / *****

Directed by: Simon Fellows.

Written by: Brendan Higgins.

Starring: Andrew Scott (Donald Devlin), Bronagh Waugh (Donna Reutzel), Denise Gough (Linda Connolly), Catherine Dyer (Mrs. Pomorski), J.D. Evermore (Cal Worbley), Jason Davis (Jerry Zeigler), Jared Bankens (George Atzerodt), Sandra Ellis Lafferty (Betty Devlin), Griff Furst (Max Himmler), Christian Finlayson (Justin Zeigler), Christa Beth Campbell (Wendy Connelly), Michael Rose (Sheriff Mooney), Cory Scott Allen (Randy), Eric Mendenhall (Bill Frankel), Andrew Masset (Dr. Joel Pomorowski), Kevin Patrick Murphy (Charlie), Nolan Cook (Tyler Zeigler), Kate Forbes (Patty Zeigler).

 

A Dark Place is a murder mystery film that would have been better with no murder mystery at all. As a portrait of small town life, in a dying part of the country, A Dark Place (which was originally called Steel Country – a better name) can be quite interesting. And its “hero” – Donald Devlin – a garbage man, somewhere on the autism spectrum – is an interesting way into this community. For the most part, people in town ignore him – they snicker behind his back when he leaves, but for the most part, they don’t even bother to think about him at all. He has a daughter who loves him – from a very brief relationship the girl’s mother would let to forget –who he sees once a week, and he takes care of his ailing mother – confined to a wheelchair, with early signs of dementia creeping in. This film can be interesting when it looks at the drudgery of life in this part of the country, and the difficulty specific to Donald in that small-town. Unfortunately, most of the film is consumed by a murder mystery which isn’t all that interesting – and it requires Donald to do things that really should have landed him in jail – perhaps for years – before the finale – which may end up with there anyway. But then again, given everything else we see him do, apparently with no consequence, probably not.

 

The mystery at the heart of A Dark Place is the death of a little boy name Tyler – who disappeared, and was found a few days later drowned in the local creak. Donald knows the kid from his garbage route – apparently, he would wave at him whenever he drove by. On his route, after the body is found, he gets out and offers his sympathy to Tyler’s mother – who cryptically tells Donald that Tyler never would have wandered off to explore the forest as the official story says. He was too scared to go anywhere. From this detail, Donald tries to unravel what really happened. He is warned off by some, encouraged by others – and is able to get a surprising amount of information out of people who really have no reason to talk to him. Everyone in this small town seems to know everyone else – unless its convenient to the plot to have them not know who Donald is, and then they have no idea.

 

Donald is played by Andrew Scott – best known (by me anyway) for what I thought was a god awful performance as Moriarty is the BBC series Sherlock. That was a bizarrely over-the-top performance, and one of those ones where I couldn’t even figure out what Scott was going for most of the time. He is much better here – although again, he does tend towards over-the-top theatrics a little more often than he probably should. Still, it’s a good performance by Scott, and does anchor the movie – he is in nearly every frame. The rest of the cast is fine, I guess, but they never really do much to distinguish themselves. Part of this is because the movie has little time for anyone who isn’t there to advance the plot at some point – so we are introduced to people seemingly at random, so they can come back into the plot at some point to give Donald the information he needs to take the next step.

 

I liked the look and feel of A Dark Place, and think that the film could well have been a fascinating portrait of small town American life – a portrait of the type of town that is dying when an industry moves away. Their version of the big city here is Pittsburgh – and the characters talk about sometimes as if it’s some unattainable dream. That rings true – as does other, small details in the film. But the overall movie is too caught up with a mystery that doesn’t really matter – and too many bizarre plot twists to seem as unbelievable as the place they happen in.