Dark Places is the movie adaption of Gillian Flynn's book published before "Gone Girl." Per usual, the book is better than the movie because there’s simply too much going on in the book to condense into a two-hour movie which doesn’t come across nearly as dark as Flynn’s book reads. The movie is a puzzling thriller with a strong list of actors including Charlize Theron, Corey Stoll, and Drea de Matteo. Charlize plays Libby Day the sole survivor of a massacre in a rural town in Kansas. Having witnessed the murder of her sisters and mother in what appears to be a Satanic cult ritual, she manages to escape and later testifies in court against her teenage brother Ben. Twenty-five years later true-crime fanatics called the Kill Club enlist Libby to exonerate her brother Ben, whom they believe in innocent, but first they must convince Libby.

The chilling story has some similarities to Charlize's real-life experience as a teenager. When she was 15 she witnessed her mother shot her alcoholic and abusive husband in an act of self defense. Charlize has spoken publicly about it.

I was scared to start this book because of the topic matter and because the reviews were very melodramatic. But honestly only 2 pages were devoted to details of the murder, the rest read like a dateline investigation series of who done it. I was perfectly fine reading it at night in my dark bedroom. This book kept me guessing throughout as it kept switching back between narrators. I highly recommend this book as a great mystery!

 But how does a movie based on a bestselling book and starring A-list actors get dumped into an extremely limited theatrical run? It was released in April in France, then opened in the US 2 weeks ago with no publicity and will go straight to video. I guess the powers that be decided the film wasn’t made well enough to spend money on promotion so it’s only made less than $1 million at the box office so far. Check out the trailer: 


Check out my list of books coming out as movies this year.