
Minka Kelly stars in yet another gaslight film in a dull and absolutely uninspired movie called Blackwater Lane (currently streaming on Peacock). She plays the role of a drama teacher who gets dramatic because a woman she knows ends up dead. The picture is an adaptation of B.A. Paris’s novel The Breakdown and falls somewhere between being a bad aggressively mediocre thriller and a bad aggressively mediocre ghost story with a hint of thriller that is however an insult to all three genres.
The Gist IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. I mean, so many of them! Cass (Kelly) navigates the bumpy dirt track leading to the house. Is this BLACKWATER LANE? George yes it is. It’s horrible out, her phone has NO SIGNAL, there’s a car in the ditch, and she’s desperately making these exhausted connections in her mind. She does not though, which is strange given the fact that there is a drunk woman waiting in her car. It’s late, she had a few drinks with her work-married friend John (Alan Calton) who will most likely provoke jealousy in her husband Matthew (Dermot Mulroney) but it’s all good. This whole scene Wait let me start from here.
The movie begins with the camera moving smoothly into the classic halls and rooms of an old house or a mansion then briefly showing Dermot before panning towards Minka juxtaposed with tarot cards who gets disturbed by a bird smashing into the window. An odd sequence. However, such an odd segment establishes a point that there is something terrible coming ahead, which is valid in the case of the majority of the cast and us the people suffering through the film.
Wassup! In this section of the narration, I wish to address this mansion in detail. First, it is located in the middle of nowhere, is a three-story building, and has been standing for more than a century. It is surrounded from one side by a canal that leads to a nice lake just beyond the backyard. Hold on a moment is this some sort of a moat? Well be. I guess it is! Alas, it does not seem to be filled with gators who are hungry enough to eat anyone attempting a siege and conquer the place. The place of the house appears to be quite large for only two people but I guess it’s alright. It is as simple as this: when there are land sprawls there are sprawls. I also assume some renovations are underway because there is a plastic screen placed in one of the wings. Cass always complains to Matthew about the noise, maybe it is because there are not like 9000 other square feet available in this dump. Then, is it so ancient that it can be said to be overflowing with ghosts? Well gollee, I dunno! And is it possible that whatever like a ghost is in Cass’s imagination, that what is behind the plastic screen is entirely possible? For almost definite!
Now, there is a person who still is sitting inside the car. She is dead. Cass had her relations with that person and the two of them are surrounded by a plot with so many red herrings, I lost count.
Natalie Simpson, who is the lone police officer on the force currently begins to knock on the door for further investigation and Cass is scared that she could mumble in the case. Matthew is kind of being a jerk and rude Cass shares her struggles with her close friend Rachel played by Maggie Grace. The alarm system of the house is not functional and it has to be fixed by a guy who is a bit weird and creepy and also comes uninvited. Cass receives many calls from many strangers but she still picks up the calls and not like any reasonable person ignores them. One evening, she loses an earring at the memorial site next to the highway. Another one of her students stalks her. Is he creepy or is it a milfy crush? It is all quiet around the night is dark, and she is home alone. Which of course gives her an eerily stimulating sensation, and then all the lights and doors begin to creak of their own accord. Could this be her dead mother? Another warning symbol? A fox is frequently present in the garden. She is also on the receiving end of aggressive tailgating too often for comfort. How could we forget the coworker guy?
Have I talked about how Cass was once treated as a mental patient? Uh, she did, and it’s her story that you keep pitying since this is done to get the audience to question whether what she is going through is real or just a figment of her imagination. Well, let us just hope that she gets some results in the very least on searching for hallucinations on Google. Let me give you a hint: she does not.
What will it remind you of? It was 1985, and I have no idea what movie-of-the-week my mom would have watched on Tuesday from the networks but I will just say that Blackwater Lane can be considered the episode of murder she wrote without an autograph the focus of the story being a wannabe detective.
Performances That Steal The Show: Most things that feature Kelly have an irresistible air to them and even if it seems that she is being ridiculed such as in this movie, she will shine as always.
Detroit Sports niche: The review of the writer is polarising and on one hand it does seem attractive. Here lies the beauty of imagination and creativity of a story in Keresan and what touched me was the subtle message implied in the movie. Should that be Minka Kelly? I am not sure, at least not a fan of hers to have desired her in the role. But I understand to create tension in movies one needs a good actress that the audience is emotionally invested in. And how it is shown in the beginning so effectively that she is trapped in a cage, half of the film she is behind bars and is shackled (literally). That frustrates you as she is the outsider and glares directing her surroundings in a quest for liberation hated her captors. Watching her his at the beginning was a saving grace as Minka had killing it.
However, Kelly’s character goes through an embarrassing phase of falling asleep and waking up at the hospital or in her own bedroom or on the floor after every occasion that she has been knocked out with a fake creative assessor meant to aid in our confusion and trick. Why is it that she must endure such pain for the amusement of others? The scenes move forward holding no excitement whatsoever as Cass goes through a state of leveled expectations and anger repeatedly, being in a never-ending hole of one incomprehensible event after another. Finally, all the secrets are told in a turn of events quite silly and sophisticated there is not only lost inhibitions to laughter, but there is also the quite justified indignation. Could someone throw this film in the moat?
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