Blackwater Lane, directed by Jeff Celentano, drops on digital download January 27th. It is an atmospheric thriller that tells the story of a woman who wasn’t a Good Samaritan, not stopping to check on a woman stranded on Blackwater Lane. Maybe, though, she’s even worse than that because that woman had been murdered! She also might be losing her mind, so could she have been involved in it?
It’s a pretty intriguing setup. Unfortunately, the film never hits the heights it had the potential to reach, and worse, it becomes predictable and kinda dull.
Cass (Minka Kelly) is a teacher in rural England who is in the middle of a huge renovation of her mansion. I know what you’re thinking. How can a teacher afford to buy a stately home in rural England? Well, the short answer is inheritance, and the long answer is the traumatic loss of her mother. Luckily, she has a good support system: her husband Matthew (Dermot Mulroney) and her best friend Rachel (Maggie Grace). But they are going to struggle to help Cass through her next incident…
You see, when driving home from end-of-term drinks, she comes across a stranded car on Blackwater Lane. Is that a dead lady in the front seat? Hmmm, better not take a look and watch the news the next morning… oh ok, it was a dead lady. Her bad.
However, could it be worse than she originally thought? Could she have had anything to do with it? Is she in the middle of another breakdown?
The premise of the movie was good if not excellently executed. A young woman with a history of mental health issues can’t figure out if she’s having another episode, perhaps leading her to kill someone. The way that she becomes isolated because people believe she’s gone a little cuckoo is pretty well done.
It’s backed by a good supporting cast, with Maggie Grace as Rachel, Cass’s best friend, and Dermot Mulroney as Cass’s husband. Their support is heartwarming, if a little misdirected. They obviously believe that Cass is going down a dark path and she needs to get the help she deserves. However, with what the audience knows, they come off as a bit gaslight-y. I think this was the intention to make Cass feel more alone, so I’d say their performances are bang-on.
If you’ve seen as many of these types of “spooky” thrillers as I have, it takes something surprising to impress me. Blackwater Lane swung hard in the opposite direction. The mystery is where you can find enjoyment, but sadly, this telegraphed its main twists in a Wile E. Coyote ACME hammer sort of way. That hidden boxing glove felt like it punched me right in the face with its predictability. I mean, come on! Try to hide it or give me interesting alternatives!
Unfortunately, I have to say that Minka Kelly didn’t deliver as a protagonist. There is something about her performance that doesn’t sit right. Perhaps it was her floaty singsong tonation that didn’t mesh with a character that is supposed to be on the edge of a breakdown. Maybe it was the chemistry she had with the other actors. Whatever it was, as a lead in this movie, Kelly seemed out of place.
It’s not often in these reviews that I point out something about how a film is edited together, but on this occasion, something grated on me so badly that I have to. Scene cuts. Why was it necessary to have so many fade-to-black scene cuts? It’s very noticeable like they’re deliberately put into the film to account for ad breaks, which is weird for a digital-only release. What that achieves, though, is a sense that this is more a collection of scenes than a cohesive unit. Towards the end, I sighed every time it happened and it broke my immersion.
In the end, Blackwater Lane is boring. I really struggled to pay full attention to this film. Whether it was the scene cuts, the predictability, or the weak leading performance, I always felt like I didn’t need to totally focus on what was happening.
Or maybe I didn’t want to.
Blackwater Lane is a thriller in name only. It left me bored and reaching to scroll on my phone. That sucks because the premise had some potential, having a young teacher believe she had murdered someone without realising it and then having her haunted by her past. Unfortunately, it couldn’t capitalize on its intriguing setup. Despite some good performances from the surrounding cast, Minka Kelly wasn’t the right person to lead Blackwater Lane out of the doldrums.
It is not a film I can recommend.
Blackwater Lane is available for digital download from 27th January.
