A DARK PLACE (2019)
Starring Andrew Scott, Denise Gough, Catherine Dyer
Directed by Simon Fellows
Distributed by Shout! Factory. 89 minutes. Not Rated.
Originally titled Steel Country when it made its way through the festival circuit, A Dark Place is the story of Donny (Andrew Scott), a sanitation worker, who becomes interested in the mysterious death of a young boy. After learning that police deemed his death an accidental drowning, Donny is determined to solve it. After a conversation with the boy’s mother where she makes a remark about how her son wouldn’t wander off alone, Donny is certain there was foul play involved.
Director Simon Fellows brings out the curiosity in each character and reminds us of what can happen to our mindset if we never explore the world around us. Cinematographer Marcel Zyskind does an expert job of bringing the small town in Ohio to life through his dark and atmospheric shots that show the deep and seedy underbelly of decay. He finds visually beautiful and striking imagery to establish the small, mid-American town we’re all familiar with. This collaboration makes the setting a living, breathing character throughout the film and one that adds dimension to the entire plot.
The film has moments where character-driven motivation is hard to find and leads to missed opportunities to educate its audience about prejudice when it comes to disability. Andrew Scott plays Donny as a man who is socially awkward, consistently missing social cues and jokes, which is never addressed nor discussed in the film. He may be someone that falls somewhere on the autism spectrum but seems to be high-functioning, because of the situations he is put into. From missing a joke and taking it at its literal meaning to becoming extremely fixated on solving the young boy’s murder, we see the same behaviors displayed throughout the media of humans with disabilities. These unanswered questions could lead to an audience questioning the characters mental health and detract from the actual storytelling. Due to his behavior not meeting society’s norms of how someone “should behave,” Donny quickly becomes the main focus and suspect. This is a trope that many, many films have used and a fresher take would have been to cast an actor on the autism spectrum to give the viewer a true account and lens to see the character of Donny through. Scott is brilliant in his portrayal and keeps Donny grounded, real, and developed but with so many actors of varying backgrounds, identities, and life experience, I am left wondering how the story would have changed and grown with different casting.
The marriage between the unsettling tone of the movie and its small-town setting makes A Dark Place a masterpiece in how symbolism and subtly are a delicate art form. Simon Fellows and Marcel Zyskind do this well when showing how the town is rotting from the inside out. Flies continually buzz around Donny as he goes from house to house collecting trash. Not only is the garbage rotting but the small town itself is too as it turns a blind eye to find the killer. From the opening, it is quickly revealed that this film has something to say about the state of power in today’s America. Clean cut lawns with Trump/Pence signs along with closed down gas stations and warehouses that hang banners of the Presidential ticket as well let us know we are modern times. This is the America that felt underrepresented and ignored by the Obama administration. Where people lie and men abuse power to keep their power. Something that can be found not only in the fictitious town from the film but in many, many pockets of America today.
A Dark Place has so many points of view it wants to explore and messages it wants to deliver, but the lack of focus and clarity in the writing makes the film fall flat. While there are many great parts that can stand alone, the complete film isn’t truly a thriller. The resolution of the mystery and who killed the young boy is underwhelming and does not feel like the payoff the viewer deserves. Unfortunately, it reaches for tragic irony but doesn’t quite make it due to inconsistencies and underdeveloped plot.
A Dark Place opens today at Arena Cinelounge Sunset and available on Amazon Prime Video.
