There has been a rash of thrillers of late where the lead actor or actress has some form of Dementia or memory loss. Which in turn causes them to not believe what’s going on in their life whether it’s real or a dream. That’s the case once again with Blackwater Lane. Sometimes these types of films capture my attention, but this one was intriguing for about half of its 1 and 48-minute runtime. The creativity is there for a good portion of the story, but there are way too many tropes to bring this movie completely home.

Cass (Minka Kelly, The Roommate) is a teacher at an English school in the countryside. She has inherited an old English manner, The Crawford House, from her parents. She seemingly lives there with her husband Matthew (Dermott Mulroney, My Best Friend’s Wedding). The house is undergoing renovations which keeps them pretty busy. While on the way home from a party at a bar after school lets out for the summer Cass notices a stranded car on the side of the road with a woman in it. It’s raining pretty hard so she doesn’t stop to see if the woman is okay or not. The next morning when she wakes up she is informed by her husband that the woman was found dead and it was a co-worker of hers from the school she teaches at. This sets off an investigation into the woman’s murder.

Director Jeff Celantano uses a lot of popular horror and thriller movie tropes to create an environment of dredd while keeping the mystery of the story until the end. Various things like seeing ghosts, dreams, and so forth help make the atmosphere of the story quite hard to follow along with. Just when you think things are going in one direction they change and go in another direction. That’s a sign of a good filmmaker. He keeps the viewers on their toes.

One of the better parts of the film is its camera work. With the English countryside being a backdrop for the movie, the lush greenery is on full display. At night it’s easy to see what’s going on whereas other films of the I’ll have bad nighttime lighting this one is very visible at night. The house itself plays a big part in the story and the scenes in the house using some of the renovations as tools to create suspense are all very effective. Once again the cinematography is very good here as well. 

One thing that helps the story is the movie’s supporting cast. Most noticeably Rachel is played by Maggie Grace. She’s a friend of the lead character and has a lot to do with the ending of the film. Grace is a good actress and she based on the script keeps her cards close to the vest. A police detective played by Natalie Simpson is well written but is a cliqued character. I’ve seen this type of character quite a bit in films of this nature. A student of the Kelly character is a bit strange but he turns out to be not much regarding the full story of the movie. The cast is well-used, but it’s mostly a three-man show, rather two women and one man are more like it. 

Blackwater Lane has its moments, but in the end, it reminds me of so many similar films. The mystery that starts in the first half of the movie is dragged out in the second half. Maybe this could have used to be about fifteen minutes shorter to make a more compact story. Minka Kelly does everything she can to make the characters’ plight worth caring about regarding the viewers watching. She just can’t save a film with so many tropes that have been done over and over again in movies of this nature. A good score and cinematography kept me invested throughout, but the story was full of cliqued plot points. Overall this film could have been done a little better.

2 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen