The Killing Game – Yet Another Lifetime Release

Runtime: 90 minutes

Release Date: October 30, 2011

Rating: NR

Director: Bobby Roth

Eve Duncan is one of the top forensic sculptors working in the world today. She got into the profession after losing her daughter years ago. The serial killer who took and killed her little girl later got caught and found himself on death row, but he refused to tell anyone what he did with the child. When he dies, everyone thinks the horror is over.

That all changes when Eve begins receiving calls and letters from a man who seemingly knows everything about the killings done by the man recently killed. He then warns her that she must save a little girl currently in foster care before he kills her first. Even works with a cop, Joe, who clearly has a crush on her and a reporter by the name of Mark. Though the unknown man tells her that Jane reminded him of her little girl, the two really share nothing in common.

Eve later works with the police to identify Jane and find her current location. When her foster mother turns up dead, the police really aren't sure what to do other than put Jane in foster care. Mark finds her current location, takes Jane to her, and the two kidnap the little girl. Eve takes her to a friend's house out in the middle of nowhere until she decides what to do next. When her mystery man warns her that she needs to dig deeper, she takes that as a sign that she should go back and investigate each grave site uncovered in the past. The deeper she gets into the old cases, the closer she gets to Jane. Unfortunately, the new killer makes it clear that if she can't figure out his identity, she and Jane will be his next victims.

Laura Prepon, what the hell are you doing in a movie like this? This had to be between That 70s Show Ended and before Orange is the New Black started. Watching her in this movie though, I almost wonder how she got work after. No one in this film really does a good job. It's also confusing why they would cast Ty Olsson as Joe when the two have little to no chemistry. While there's some mild flirtation between the two of them, they later have sex and he confesses that he's in love with her, which seems to come out of nowhere. To make it even worse, she apparently loves him too, though she clearly had better chemistry with Mark.

The problem with The Killing Game is that nothing really happens. While it's terrible that he killed the foster mother, we then get stuck with multiple scenes of two characters roaming through the woods and talking without anything really happening. Something mildly interesting will occur, but then we're back to lots of talking.

Even the reveal of the real killer was fairly lame because he was only in a few scenes and didn't really have much of a role. I looked at my boyfriend as soon as the guy came on screen and said it was him. They do try to throw a red herring at us in the form of someone who actually had a major role in the movie, but the way they did it made it pretty clear that it wasn't him. The Killing Game was based on a popular book, and all I can say is that I hope the book was a lot better!

Dark Places – Read the Book

Runtime: 113 minutes

Release Date: June 18, 2015

Rating: R

Director: Gilles Paquet-Brenner

Libby Day was just as a child when she lost her entire family. Her older brother Ben became the chief suspect and landed in prison for the murders of his mother and two younger sisters. Libby became an overnight sensation for her survival, landing on the covers of magazines and doing television appearances. She even wrote a best selling book and had a group of fans raise donations in the form of $1 million for her.

Years later, Libby is an adult and still trying to recover from the events of that night. After a meeting with her agent, she learns that all the money is nearly gone because she lived off it her entire life without working a single day. She gets a letter from a young man named Lyle who asks her to meet with his group one night. His group attempts to solve mysteries and loves serial killer crimes, and he can pay her for participating.

When Libby attends, she learns that many people believe that he brother is innocent of the crime. Many think it was her estranged POS father, while others think Libby herself is to blame because she named her brother as the killer. As Libby becomes caught up in the mystery surrounding what actually happened that night, she discovers that she knows less about her family than she ever believed.

After reading and watching Gone Girl, I downloaded Dark Places and read it in a single night. It was so good that I couldn't put it down, couldn't stop talking about it, and raved to everyone that it was so much better than Gone Girl. The twists that came at the end kept me gasping page after page, and I spent much of the book trying to figure out what happened. Sadly, Dark Places was nothing like the book.

The book did a great job of making you suspect every single character and keeping you guessing. Once it finally started wrapping up all its loose ends, it was like one amazing new piece of information every page. The movie takes too long to tie up those loose ends. You learn one piece of information, get another boring scene, learn something else, another boring scene, something new. I was so excited for my boyfriend to try and figure out the ending, but it took so long for us to learn everything that it wound up being a let down.

There were multiple things that both my roommate and my boyfriend didn't understand that I had to explain. It was like the screenwriter assumed that everyone who watched Dark Places read the book and would know what was coming. Other things were glossed over so quickly that it took awhile to remember what happened earlier in the movie.

While there was some good acting in the movie, it really didn't compare to Gone Girl. Charlize Theron gave Libby such a cool and calm attitude that it seemed like she didn't give a shit about anything that happened and that she never worried or felt any type of danger. It just gave me a cold feeling that made me want to go back and read the book.