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With: Minka Kelly, Dermot Mulroney, Maggie Grace, Judah Cousin, Alan Calton, Pandora Clifford, Natalie Simpson, Edward Baker-Duly, Kris Johnson
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Written by: Elizabeth Fowler, based on a novel by B.A. Paris
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Directed by: Jeff Celentano
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violent content, thematic elements involving suicide, sexuality and terror
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Running Time: 108
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Date: 06/21/2024
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Cass-lighting
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Listless and overlong and packed with mostly unlikable characters, Jeff Celentano's thriller Blackwater Lane seems to have taken a perfectly decent murder plot and gutted it, exposing it for how utterly absurd it really is.
Cass Anderson (Minka Kelly) teaches drama in England, lives with her husband Matthew (Dermot Mulroney) in a beautiful old house. One night, driving home from an after-school celebration, she takes a shortcut through the woods. It's pouring rain and she sees a car by the side of the road with a woman inside. She drives home and learns the next morning that the woman was murdered.
She talks about it at lunch with her best friend Rachel (Maggie Grace), but, during the conversation, seems to have begun forgetting things. She goes back to where the car was parked and finds one of her own earrings. A contract for a new security system for the house was signed by her, and she has no memory of it. Unfortunately, she also begins seeing ghosts and believes her life may be in danger. Or is her mind playing tricks on her?
Based on a novel by B.A. Paris, Blackwater Lane is far from what you'd call "taut," and its slackness makes its so-called secrets stand out like sore thumbs. And the expanse of the evil plot requires so many moving parts that it doesn't seem plausible that it ever could have worked.
Right off the bat, the characters are grating. Cass seems rather self-involved; all the men in the movie are attracted to her and she takes that for granted. And her husband Matthew is condescending to her. They rarely seem to communicate; they mostly bicker. And Rachel is not much of a best friend, making harsh comments and then leaving Cass whenever she needs her most. (According to the characters, the nicest person in the movie is Jane, the corpse in the car.)
Overall, Blackwater Lane tries hard to maintain a professional polish, but it too often suffers from budgetary constraints or dips into sheer ineptitude. (Scary stuff includes at least four phone calls with scratchy sound and no one on the line!) It's one of those movies that might have been more fun if it had been a little closer to bad, but instead it's just bleh.
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